Safety First

• If you are injured seek medical attention immediately!

• If you have sustained severe injuries that need immediate attention do not worry about the initial investigation and seek medical attention immediately!  

• Even if you do not have medical insurance make sure you seek medical attention from a primary care provider before you seek other forms of treatment, i.e., chiropractor care or Physical Therapy or any holistic methods

Initial Investigation

• Only If you can move around without severe pain and can get yourself to the hospital or your primary care doctor on your own, you start your quick investigation of the accident.

• Start by taking pictures of the scene of the accident, i.e., all cars involved, the roads and street signs around the scene of the accident and your injuries if visible

• Make sure to ask for the exchange of information form provided by the police. Usually, the police at the scene will give this form to you along with your police report number. Please, note the police will not have the accident report ready for you at the scene. We will take care of getting that for you.

• Take pictures of insurance cards of all parties involved as well as Drivers Licenses if the person allows.

Treatment

• ​​When seeking help from your primary care doctor or the Emergency room staff make sure to explain your injuries in detail and how you feel the accident may have caused these injuries. DO NOT EXAGGERATE YOUR INJURIES

• Follow the treatment your doctor suggests

• Continue to treat your injuries until you feel better DO NOT leave gaps in your treatment as that tells the insurance company that you did not need treatment during that gap of time and can be an obstacle in your case later on

• Keep track of the treatment you receive like the names of the treatment facilities and doctors you see. If sent to other facilities like an imaging center make sure to keep track of this along with any prescriptions you are given (if paying out of pocket KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS)

• If you are given restrictions at work due to your injuries or are given a doctors note to stay home from work or school while you recover, please keep a copy of those as well all of these documents will be helpful in speeding up your case process

Contact Fuentes & Esquivel, P.A.

• ​​Contact our office as soon as you can after your initial treatment your health is always priority number one so please be sure to contact us only after you have taken care of your injuries that need immediate attention Our phones are on 24/7 and someone from our legal team will contact you within a few hours if you speak with someone on our call team after hours.

• Your consultation is free, and we don’t get paid unless you get paid, so there is never an upfront cost to you for our services.

Car Repairs

• ​​We know it is important to you to get your vehicle back up and running again if you have trouble getting in touch with the insurance about your car repairs you can call your insurance company and they will help you get that sorted quickly

• When speaking with the at-fault party's insurance about your car repairs so not make any statements to them about the accident let them know you have retained an attorney and that your call is only about your car repairs

Liability & Medical Investigation

• ​​Our legal team will continue to get information from you about your treatment progress, please reach out to us during your time of treatment with any questions you may have we are here to help!

• As soon as you are released from your treatment please notify us so we can move on to the next step of your case!

• When you are released from the treatment we will start our investigation process and begin gathering evidence such as your hospital, doctors and any other treatment notes available to present to the insurance company

• Please note that this will be the longest step in your case in most cases it can take months for the providers to get us all of the information necessary to move forward with your case.

Settlement Demands

• ​​our Attorney will send out what is known as a settlement demand package which will include all of our findings and evidence such as police reports, pictures, Medical bills and reports from doctors stating your injuries and treatment you received at this time we will also be asking for compensation of your pain and suffering as well loss of wages given that you have submitted proof of hours lost of work due to the injuries from the car wreck. We typically provide the insurance company 30 days to respond to our first demand.

Negotiations 

• ​​We will work with the insurance company as best we can to come to a settlement agreement that is fair for your case If we find the insurance company is not willing to settle for what would be a fair settlement we will take your case to trial

Mediation

• ​​In most cases, we can resolve your case in the negotiation step, and there is no need for mediation or trial however if we are unable to reach an agreement of a fair settlement with the insurance company we will move onto mediation which is a dispute resolution process where. Aneautural 3rd party facilitates a discussion between the parties to the lawsuit to try and settle the case before it gets to trial. 

Trial

• ​​If or when it comes to taking your case to trial our expert team of lawyers with more than 20 years in litigation will fight for fair compensation in court for you.