It is very important to consult a good personal injury lawyer when you have been involved in an accident. The reason being, first you have either incurred personal injury at work or you have been involved in an accident due to somebody’s negligence. If in either or these cases there has been no fault of yours, then you should definitely look into the case details by consulting a good injury lawyer. The lawyer will be well-versed with the laws that involve such cases and also they will know every tack to bring the culprit down for a good compensation.

A good injury lawyer will also know how strong your case can build up to ensure you maximum compensation. But be sure they charge nothing until they have won you maximum compensation for personal injury. Accident caused due to someone’s negligence at work or in the traffic can amount to huge financial losses. This can be handled by the lawyers specialized in fighting personal injury cases. There could always be a chance that you may be working at some construction unit and suddenly a lever gets loose and happens to fall on your feet, or shoulder causing heavy injuries. A good injury lawyer will ensure that you have been paid maximum compensation in such situations and this will also make the employer aware of his/her negligence to provide good safety measures.

You will be entitled for compensation only when such accidents have occurred on another person’s property or even more, if your vehicle was not breaking traffic rules. There could also be slip and fall incidents at work places which don’t have safe flooring and good lift facilities etc. But in the end, eye witnesses to your personal injury case matter a lot as they would make things easier for your personal injury lawyer to claim a good compensation on your behalf.

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Let’s say that you are involved in a personal injury accident in San Francisco. Let’s also assume that like thousands of other folks in the San Francisco Bay Area you have private health insurance (mostly likely through your workplace or employer).

So, you go to the hospital for your injuries, say San Francisco General – and the good folks there send out bills for one amount (what was charged) but accept as payment from your insurance company another amount (what was paid).

If you go to trial on your personal injury case, which amount do you get at trial (assuming you win of course) – what was charged or what was paid?

Well, the Fourth Appellate District of California Howell v. Hamilton Meats answered that question: the jury is able to award the injury victim what was charged. And assuming they do, you, the injury victim, are entitled to obtain without reduction what was charged by your hospital.

The scenario that I outline above is one that has caused an endless debate between personal injury attorneys (not just in San Francisco but across California) and insurance defense counsel.

Personal injury attorneys, like myself, want the jury to hear, be able to award, and the injury victim to be entitled to, what was charged.  And insurance defense attorneys want the injury victim to be entitled to what was paid.

The Court in Howell added their two cents by examining the collateral source rule, its application, and fully evaluating what resides in the gap between what is charged by a hospital to an injury victim and what is paid by the injury victim’s health insurance company for her medical care.

In other words, what does the difference between what was charged and what was paid represent? The Court answered – a benefit within the meaning of the collateral source rule.

To put this as simply as possible: in California, the collateral source rules states that collateral source payments such as insurance or disability are irrelevant in a personal injury trial. The bad guys don’t get the benefit of the injury victim being responsible and having insurance. So, a jury is not allowed to hear about collateral source benefits like health insurance and an award by a jury to an injury victim is not reduced because of such payments for her medical treatment.

When a hospital negotiates with a health insurance company and agrees to take less that what it would normally charge for its services, it is not out of the goodness of its heart. It is because it is getting something for that reduction – a certain volume of business, faster payments, advertising, all sorts of things. Those things – those in-kind benefits – are benefits within the meaning of the collateral source rule.  And when a hospital agrees to accept as full payment the negotiated rate – meaning the injury victim doesn’t owe any additional amount – that too is a benefit within the meaning of the collateral source rule.

So, the Court ruled that you can’t reduce the plaintiff or injury victim’s award by the difference between what was charged and what was paid because that difference is a collateral source benefit.  So there!

Brett A. Burlison is a personal injury attorney and trial lawyer representing plaintiffs in serious personal injury and wrongful death matters with offices in San Francisco, San Jose, and Austin.
http://sf-injury-law-answers.com/
http://www.burlisonlaw.com/

Slip and fall cases are one of the backbones of Personal Injury Law. But slip and fall cases indicate something very specific. A slip and fall case is when a person is on a premises, such as a store or business, and he or she slips on liquid left out. If the person is seriously injured, he or she can pursue a lawsuit on the grounds that the company, employee or manager on duty acted negligently by both failing to find the liquid and by failing to remove it before a patron slipped. But there is another type of fall associated with personal injury that is generally much more fatal. That type of fall is called an elevated fall.

An elevated fall is when an individual falls from a very high place onto the ground. Persons who are injured may be eligible for compensation if:

• The fall happened while a person was working-this is common among construction workers who have to work on roofs or on cranes and have a good chance of slipping and falling a good distance.

• A club or course-a rock climbing course or a course on skiing may have casualties from falls. If the instructor acted negligently or the owner of the premises on which the fall happened failed to safe guard the area, they may be sued for wrongful death.

• Decks or balconies-deck and balcony collapse is an area of PI law which is separate from falls. But an elevated fall may be a part of a personal injury case or it could become a personal injury case if the there was some sort obstruction that made the victim trip and fall off the balcony. Whether or not the victim was intoxicated at the time of the fall may end up being a large factor in the PI case.

Elevated falls tend to end in more serious personal injury cases as these falls much more frequently end in death. If they do not end in death, they will likely end in much more severe injury and thus much more monetary damage in the form of medical bills, missed wages and rehabilitation costs.

Anytime someone is working at a high elevation, the possibility for serious injury should be evaluated.