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Building a Comprehensive Case

Updated December 28, 2018 | By Wilson Kehoe Winingham staff

When building a personal injury case, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Victim and witness testimony provides a detailed account of what happened, but the narrative is only part of the information necessary to express your side of the story.

How to Build a Comprehensive Case

There are two broad topics to cover when putting together your case: detailing losses and establishing fault. Both are critical parts of a personal injury case.

Detailing Immediate and Future Losses

A crucial aspect of your case is detailing your losses, not all of which are easily quantifiable. It’s imperative that your legal team be able to clearly present and quantify all the losses resulting from your injuries.

Identifying immediate losses is a relatively straightforward matter. Medical bills and lost wages are generally hard dollar figures that are easy to document. Immediate losses may include the following:

  • Medical bills, including doctor, laboratory, imaging, and hospital charges
  • Cost of medical equipment
  • Physical therapy
  • Expense of retrofitting your home to accommodate short-term or long-term disability
  • Cost of transportation to and from follow-up visits and therapy sessions
  • Lost wages

Future losses are more difficult to document. Your attorney may retain medical experts to evaluate your injuries and future prognosis, life care planners to evaluate the amount of future money you will lose due to your injuries, or other experts to help assign real dollar amounts to your future expenses and lost income potential.

In addition to expenses and lost income, you may qualify for monetary compensation for pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment in life. If you have to miss important events, such as a planned vacation or family wedding, because of your injuries, that’s a loss for you—even though there may not be a direct financial cost.

Establishing Fault in a Personal Injury Case

The second part of building a comprehensive personal injury case is establishing fault—in other words, showing that another person or persons were responsible for your injuries.

To do so, your attorney may locate and interview witnesses in addition to carefully listening to your own description of events. In some cases, it can be productive to interview persons who didn’t witness the incident but have useful knowledge pertaining to the location or circumstances surrounding your injury. For instance, if you tripped on uneven pavement in front of a store and no one witnessed your fall, your attorney may interview workers who may have seen others trip and escape injury. That would establish that the uneven pavement was a known hazard.

Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer Today

If you or a loved one have been injured as a result of negligence, you are urged to contact the Indianapolis Personal Injury Attorneys of Wilson Kehoe Winingham. The lawyers at WKW have over thirty years of experience advocating for injury victims and can help you get the compensation you deserve. We will assemble a comprehensive case to make sure your voice is heard.

Call 317.920.6400 or fill out an online contact form for a free, no-obligation case evaluation.

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Let WKW put our experience to work for you. Contact us for your free case evaluation.

 

Or, call us today at (317) 920-6400

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