Brattleboro Car Accident Lawyers

Living or working in Vermont means doing quite a bit of driving. And driving a car or truck is dangerous. Every day, from St. Johnsbury to Brattleboro, car and truck accidents happen – fender benders, parking-lot bumps, and total highway wrecks with fatalities. It’s a fact of modern life that we all take our lives – and the health and safety of perfect strangers – into our hands when we take the wheel. Piloting a ton or two of steel, glass, and rubber at high speeds in variable weather means each of us has an absolute duty to ourselves and other drivers to pay attention to our driving and follow the rules of the road.

Vermont law says that if a driver doesn’t pay attention or fails to follow the rules of the road, that driver is responsible for the consequences. And the consequences of car or truck crashes is, among other things, financial. We all pay for car and truck insurance and expect it to be there for us if we need it – but often, when we have been in a crash or accident, the insurance company does whatever it can to avoid its own responsibility.

That’s where a good personal injury/car accident lawyer steps in. At Larson & Gallivan Law, we are ready to go to bat for you to prove to the insurance company to pay out what it ought to. The point of the personal injury claim is to compensate you for all the harms caused by carelessness, including health care costs, lost wages or other income, pain and suffering, and lost enjoyment of life.

Brattleboro has a significant number of crashes and fatalities on its roads. Compared to the rest of Vermont, Brattleboro has more deaths on average and more traffic crashes per 1000 people. Meanwhile, the leading causes of traffic fatalities in Vermont are:

• Failure to wear a seat belt
• Impaired driving
• Speeding
• Recklessness

Of course, the sample size is small to make these kinds of statements, but everyone who drives in and around Brattleboro, Putney, and the intersections of Route 5 or I-91 knows that the roads are confusing and drivers can be distracted. So it’s important to have an idea of what to do if you or a loved one is in a car or truck wreck.

At the Scene

If you are in a car or truck accident, move your car if you’re able to the side of the road. Take a breath. Is anyone in the car badly injured and either unconscious or bleeding? Don’t move them. Call 9-1-1 if you have a cell phone (or cell phone coverage). If you don’t, wave down a car if you can or go to a nearby house to call for help. Enlist helps to wave down traffic if you need to because your car is blocking the drive lane. Of course, this is all assuming you are able to do these things.

When help arrives and if you are able, get the names and phone numbers of anyone at the scene or to whom you talked. The police investigators should do this, but they don’t always get all witnesses. Exchange insurance information, name, and contact info with the other driver.

If you have pain or stiffness at all or feel your head is foggy, take the ambulance to the nearest ER to get checked out. It’s amazing how adrenaline can mask the symptoms of serious injuries in the first few hours after a crash and it’s important to get a review of your symptoms and systems right away.

Early Stages of Treatment and Recovery

Most of your recovery will be about getting better – as it should be. The most important thing for you to do early in the claim gets all the medical help that’s available to you. After your visit to the ER, you will be invited to set up appointments with specialists, physical therapy, and your primary doctor. Do these things.

If your back, neck, or shoulders are giving your new trouble, see a chiropractor and ask about physical therapy. These treatments don’t always work and they don’t work for everyone, but the point is don’t leave any options on the table. Do the work and get as much better as you can.

Choosing a Lawer

Early in the claim process, you will get a call from an insurance agent, who wants to get a statement from you and settle the claim for as little as possible. This is a good time to get a lawyer on your side instead.

At Larson & Gallivan Law, we often decide with our client to give a statement to an insurance adjuster, but we will help you think through the probable questions you will be asked, and we will do one or more practice sessions with you first. We like to think that if we prepare with you as we would for your trial early on, you probably won’t need a trial.

Larson & Gallivan is located in Rutland, but we work throughout the State of Vermont. We have spent a lot of time in Brattleboro and have represented your neighbors in the Windham Superior Court and other courts in this county. Don’t be afraid to give us a call – if you have a claim that is worth pursuing, we would be happy to help you with it. We are often in or around Brattleboro and can assist you with your claim.

With that in mind, don’t hire a lawyer just because your friend used that lawyer for a DUI case or something else that isn’t a car accident claim. Being a lawyer involves specializing, and you want someone who knows how to get the best settlement for you in your case.

Settling your Insurance Claim

In most cases, we will follow your medical treatment until you are at a “medical endpoint” where there isn’t more treatment that’s likely to make a big difference for you. At that point, we will put together a demand package – a letter to the insurance company or companies (very often you will be dealing with more than one) to insist on a settlement of your claim.

The demand package will include our assessment of the damages (such as wrongful death, pain and suffering, lost income, lost wages, lost enjoyment of life, etc.) and the reasons why we will win if we go to court. The package will include your key medical records and the police report, along with other research we conduct on your behalf. Seven times out of ten we then are able to negotiate a settlement for you that makes sense rather than going to court.

Filing a Lawsuit

Sometimes the case doesn’t settle, and we need to file a lawsuit. The other driver will be named as the defendant in the lawsuit, or the employer may be at times. On occasion, the state or municipality might also be a defendant if that entity failed to provide a reasonably safe road surface or other conditions that could have kept you safe on the road.

Eventually, the lawsuit leads to a mediation, where there is another opportunity to settle your car accident or truck crash case. Nine times out of ten the case will settle at either the demand package stage or the mediation. If it doesn’t, you will want a lawyer in your corner who is ready and able to take your case to a jury and demand an amount to make you whole.

At the office of Larson & Gallivan Law, we are here to provide support during every step of handling your car accident claim and getting a fair settlement offer. But we also commit to being brutally honest with you throughout this process and giving you as much information and guidance as possible to resolve this chapter of your life with grace and resolve. We want friends and clients for life and hope you’ll join us.