Hartsville, SC Car Accident Lawyer

If you were injured in a car accident, you might be dealing with medical bills, vehicle repairs, and painful injuries. You should speak to a lawyer about getting fair compensation for the accident from the driver who hit you.

Immediately after your accident, you should call the police and emergency responders. Get to a hospital as fast as possible, even if you do not feel badly hurt. After getting treated for any injuries and speaking to the police, call a lawyer. Common injuries in car accidents might range from mild to severe, and many accident survivors have a combination of injuries. Evidence to support your claims for damages includes evidence from the accident scene, medical records, and witnesses. Your attorney can help you gather what you need to initiate your claim, assess your damages, and fight for the most compensation possible.

Call Burriss Ridgeway Injury Lawyers at (803) 451-4000 and schedule a confidential case evaluation at no cost to you with our car accident lawyers.

What You Should Do Right After a Car Accident in Hartsville, SC

You might be overwhelmed and in serious pain after a car accident, but there are steps you should take to make sure you get help fast and your legal rights are protected. Your first step should be to call for help. If you are injured and unable to make this call on your own, someone nearby, like the other driver, should do it for you.

Call the police. Often, drivers are legally required to contact the police before leaving the scene of an accident. You should also have an ambulance sent to the accident scene to help you and anyone else who might be hurt. If you do not feel badly injured, you should still go to the hospital as soon as possible. You might have internal or unseen injuries that need immediate attention.

If possible, take photos, record videos, and try to take mental notes of the accident scene. Accident scenes are usually cleared away by the authorities pretty quickly for safety purposes, and important evidence might be lost forever. The damage to your vehicle, tire marks on the road, and even weather conditions at that time might be recorded in your photos. Our car accident attorneys can use these photos and videos as evidence later.

Finally, you should contact a lawyer as soon as possible. Even if you are unsure how to proceed or whether you even want to take legal action, a lawyer can advise you of your rights and what your damages might be like.

Common Injuries in Car Accidents in Hartsville, SC

Serious injuries are common in car accident cases, and many injured drivers have difficulty keeping up with the expenses. Even if your injuries are not serious, they might still be uncomfortable and expensive to treat. Speak to a doctor about your injuries immediately and talk to a lawyer about how to get compensation for your medical costs and more.

Many routine injuries in car accident cases include broken bones, lacerations, bruises, and various soft tissue injuries. Often, these injuries are not considered severe by doctors and typically respond well to treatment. Many patients with these kinds of injuries tend to make full recoveries. Even so, a full recovery does not mean that treatment is cheap. You might still have incredibly high medical bills, and you probably endured a lot of pain. You deserve fair compensation.

In more severe accidents, injuries might be more complex, expensive to treat, and involve long-term pain and complications. Head and neck injuries can be extremely painful and come with a whole host of problems. Even whiplash, which often recovers with time, may be extremely painful and last for weeks or months. Spinal cord injuries can be especially devastating as they might cause paralysis and hinder mobility. Brain injuries are also possible.

While physical injuries are often considered first when assessing damages for a car accident, you should not forget to consider psychological injuries. Car accidents can be traumatizing, and injured victims might have difficulty emotionally processing what happened. Things like depression, panic attacks, and PTSD are common complaints among accident survivors. While these conditions might not have a direct financial cost, they still deserve compensation.

Finding Evidence to Support Your Car Accident Claims in Hartsville, SC

Evidence is the backbone of your case. Without it, everything falls apart. Where to find evidence is the million-dollar question. Your efforts to gather evidence may begin immediately after the accident.

A lot of valuable evidence is located right at the accident scene. Unfortunately, injured drivers are sometimes overwhelmed or in too much pain to take advantage of this opportunity. Before they know it, law enforcement clears away the scene, and the evidence is gone forever. A good way to preserve the accident scene is to take photos and record videos. Try to record as much as possible, as you never know what details from the scene might come up later. Photos of the vehicle, surrounding area, marks on the road, and drivers might make or break your case.

Police reports are typically inadmissible, but they might contain details about the accident and people involved that can lead us to admissible evidence. For example, you might not have realized that the other driver was intoxicated at the accident scene because you were focused on getting to the hospital. The police, however, would have picked up on this and taken the other driver in for chemical testing. These details and a blood alcohol concentration measurement might be in the police report.

Speak to Our Hartsville, SC Car Accident Lawyers About Your Case Today

Call Burriss Ridgeway Injury Lawyers at (803) 451-4000 and set up a confidential case evaluation for no charge with our car accident lawyers.

$6 Million

The Plaintiff was injured as a result of a failing component of a commercial motor vehicle that fell from the vehicle into the roadway. The Plaintiff brought claims against the owner and operator of the tractor trailer as well as the manufacturer of the vehicle.

$4.1 Million

The Plaintiff was insured as a result of a refrigeration system that malfunctioned, spraying ammonia gas into the Plaintiff's face. As a result of this event, the Plaintiff sustained significant vision loss. The Plaintiff brought claims against his employer and the manufacturer of this system.

$2 Million

The Plaintiff was injured while riding his motorcycle when he collided with another vehicle. This event occurred in the city of Columbia and the Plaintiff sustained significant bodily injury resulting in extensive medical expenses and permanent injury.

$1.8 Million

The Plaintiff was injured when he was rear-ended by a tractor trailer on Interstate 20. The Plaintiff brought claims against the owner and driver of the tractor trailer for his injuries relate to his lower back.

$1.5 Million

The Plaintiff sustained significant injury when she was attacked by a dog while performing repairs on a rental property. The Plaintiff was at the rental property as part of her employment with a rental management agency. She was attacked by the animal and sustained permanent nerve damage in her legs.

$1.3 Million

The Plaintiff was killed as a result of a collision with a logging truck that had been improperly loaded by a timber harvester. The proceeds of the settlement were funded by both the timber harvester and the owner of the logging truck.

$1.5 Million

The Plaintiff underwent surgery to her neck as a result of injuries sustained when she was struck on the head by a piece of loading equipment at her job. The Plaintiff was employed by a national retailer and was engaged in stocking shelves when the piece of equipment failed. After settling her workers' compensation claim, the Plaintiff brought a claim against the manufacturer of this equipment.

$1.1 Million

The Plaintiff brought a claim against a local medical facility for a false positive HIV reading. As a result of this false positive, the Plaintiff lived for 4½ years believing that she had the virus which leads to what she feared was an eventual AIDS diagnosis.