You’ve been hurt, and it wasn’t your fault. Maybe you even went to the emergency room and missed a couple days of work. Anybody who has been in your situation knows that the last thing that you want to deal with is an insurance company who may be trying to convince you to take a small settlement before you even know if you’re done healing.

Every personal injury attorney in Phoenix, throughout Arizona and the world for that matter knows that. Here’s somethings they don’t all know: you deserve to be treated like a person and not like a number. At Civitas Law Group we take certain steps to ensure just that.

The first step is we keep in contact with you. You’ll be posted on the developments of your case, and part of that contact is to listen to you so that we can identify your needs together. You deserve to have your case flow as smoothly as possible.

Sometimes we can help you even if the help isn’t exactly related to the case, and even if we won’t make money offering that help. These are ideals that many modern attorneys have forgotten, but at Civitas law group, we haven’t forgotten.

If you want to work with a legal team who follows these ideals, contact us today for a free consultation. If you need to know more about what we do, keep reading about some of the types of personal injury cases that we handle.

Auto Accidents

Auto accidents are the most common of personal injury cases, but they are also commonly mishandled. Some people decide to negotiate a settlement on their own because they think it will be easy, and many attorneys take personal injury cases for the same reason. The fact is, you need experience working with insurance companies, and some knowledge of personal injury law in order to obtain the settlement that you deserve. The following experience from the founder of Civitas, Jeromy West, attorney at law, illustrates this point:

“I was one of those people who needed an attorney but didn’t know it. About three years before I started law school I was in an accident while riding my motorcycle. I wasn’t hurt very seriously, and that was part of the problem. Because I didn’t have broken bones or brain damage, I thought that I didn’t need an attorney. Man, I was wrong! I managed to settle the case for enough money to get a new motorcycle, pay off my medical expense and have some money left over, but my lack of experience was an issue.

I had not tried to ride my new motor cycle before I settled with the insurance company. I let them push me into settlement before I realized a major issue. I tried riding my motor cycle a few weeks after the insurance check arrived and I realized that I was not mentally capable of riding. Every time I tried to ride, and a car would approach from the right, like the one that hit me, my chest would tighten, my breathing would accelerate, and I wouldn’t be able to focus on the road. In short, I didn’t realize that my accident would leave a mental scar like it did.

I realized a short time later that I should have had an experienced accident injury attorney to help me. An attorney would have known to ask me if I have tried to ride yet. He or she would have asked me if I had a medical examination of my head, neck, back, hips all the way down to the toes because many things can go wrong during an auto accident. I decided that I would be that attorney for other people. I can be that attorney for you.”

Civitas is dedicated to being the legal team that helps you through your auto accident settlement, litigation or trial, and we will provide you with the legal experience that you need. Call us today for a free consultation.

Slip or Trip and Fall

These types of personal injury cases are quite different from auto accidents. In an auto accident there should be a police report and that report probably says who is at fault. On the other hand, Slip or Trip and falls do not have this luxury. In fall cases, at least some investigation must be done to determine what caused the fall, if the cause could or should have been prevented, if the owner or operator of the premises where the fall occurred knew or should have known about the condition, and so on. As you can probably guess, knowledge of statutes, case law and other legal sources are imperative to showing fault in these cases.

For instance, are you wondering why “slip” or “trip” are separated in the above paragraph? That’s because the laws can be slightly different for each. Generally, in a slip and fall the rules that a business must follow are to conduct regular and reasonable inspection to check for hazards, such as spilled water, that may cause injury to whoever may be on their premises. A trip and fall on the other hand is usually caused by a static condition, like a construction defect, which causes a fall. This is just one small example of why an experienced legal team is necessary to ensure that individuals are properly taken care of after incidents of this sort.

Regardless of whether your slip or trip and fall happened at a grocery store, gas station, doctor’s office or just on the side walk, the most important thing to remember is that just because there was an injury does not mean someone else is at fault. Many times people get caught in the fact that they fell at a store, and they want the store to pay. These people are greatly disappointed when they find out that the store was following a reasonable policy, or even worse, that the injured individual’s own negligence was the cause of the fall. In these situations, the injured party is not usually entitled to compensation from the property owner.

However, businesses and property owners would like injured parties to believe that these situations are the rule more often than the exception. Frequently people expect these cases to function like auto accidents where a claim is filed, an adjuster calls the injured party, offers a less than adequate settlement and a check is mailed after the injured party agrees. People are surprised when they find that the other party is much more likely to deny liability, and therefore deny their claim. This is why parties who are injured in these types of accidents need our legal team to help them get their medical bills paid, their lost wages paid and their pain and suffering compensated.

Other Personal Injuries

Although the injuries mention above are the most common types of personal injury cases, there are many others that Civitas can help you with. Some of these are caused by products, and some of them are not negligence based at all.

Products Liability is a type of claim that occurs when a person is injured because of a product. It could be a faulty chair you sat on that broke, faulty beauty product that caused skin damage, or faulty remote control that electrocuted you when you tried to change the channel from the basketball game to the Kardashians (it could happen). These types of claim should prompt you to call an attorney immediately.

Battery is an intentional act that a person commits against another person. It is a crime and a tort (civil action). A battery is an intentional offensive touching of another person without their permission. A very basic example of this is when one person walks up to another and punches them. Not only could the offending party be liable for a crime, he or she could also be liable for civil (monetary) damages.

Other types of personal injuries could exist that are not covered on this page. That doesn’t mean we can’t help you with your case. It just means there are a lot of laws on the books and we can’t cover them all here. Furthermore, even if Civitas is not the right law firm for you, we still want to help. Call us, and if we can’t take your case, we will search our network of attorneys and help you find the right attorney for your case. You’ve already been injured, the last thing you need is to make a thousand phone calls looking for the right attorney! Helping people in our community, even when they will be using another firm, is another way that “Civitas” means community.