Johns Island Personal Injury Lawyer

You never know when someone might give you an injury in an accident. Injuries can destroy your life and your income. Why should you be left with the consequences? The fact is, you don’t. Not when you have a personal injury lawyer in Johns Island on your side.

Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward have been helping people in Johns Island with their personal injury cases for a long time now. If you live there, or anywhere else in South Carolina, we can help you seek compensation for your injuries. Here’s how we can help you.

How Personal Injury Lawyers Help People

You know that someone caused you to get injured. Proving it to the insurance company or to the court is another matter. Personal injury lawyers do many tasks for their clients to help them with their cases while clients focus on healing. Among these tasks include:

• Evaluating your case for validity
• Calculating how much your case is worth
• Gathering evidence to build a strong case
• Negotiating with insurance companies to attempt to come to a fair settlement offer
• Acting as a go-between for you and all other parties
• Keeping you informed of all the changes in your case
• Filing all paperwork correctly and on time with the courts, insurers, etc.
• Defending your interests in court should a lawsuit become necessary
• Advising you on actions to do and avoid to improve your case outcome

When you meet with us for a free consultation, we will examine your case for merit. If we feel you have a good chance of success, we will make an offer of representation to serve your needs until your case is complete. And we will do everything we can to help you get the most value out of your personal injury case.

What We Must Prove to Win Your Personal Injury Case

In any personal injury situation, we must show four things are true to win. The details may differ between practice areas, but the fundamental four must be present:

Duty

A duty of care is a responsibility to act in a certain way toward other people. For instance, a driver has a duty of care to avoid harming other drivers. A property owner has one toward people invited onto their property. In order for someone to be liable for your injuries, we have to prove a duty of care exists.

Breach

This breach is the cause for negligence and opens the opportunity for danger to other people. A driver might drive recklessly or drunk. The property owner may put off repairs or fail to put up a warning sign. In a medical situation, a doctor might do something worse than the standards of care for their profession.

Injury

Negligence alone is not open to civil liability in personal injury cases. There must be an injury caused by the breach, not just the threat of one. The state may decide to punish someone negligent, like with a reckless driver, but until there is a crash, there is no chance of a civil lawsuit.

Damages

The last thing to prove is that the consequences of the injury are severe enough to warrant a lawsuit. These consequences are called damages. If you are injured in a very minor way that heals quickly, there may not be enough consequences to justify the expense of a lawsuit.

Once our Johns Island personal injury attorneys can show duty, breach, injury, and damages, then we can show the insurance companies and the court that you have a valid claim. From there, it’s a matter of negotiating which damages apply and what their worth is.

Comparative Negligence Law in Johns Island

The law in South Carolina recognizes that all parties in an accident might share responsibility. South Carolina uses a concept called comparative negligence under S.C. Code of Laws § 15-38-15 to decide how compensation is split among the parties. The two basic rules are:

• If you’re over 50% negligent, you cannot recover damages. You will be the one held responsible.
• If you have the lower amount of negligence, your percentage of negligence will reduce your winnings. If you have 20% responsibility, you will lose 20% of your winnings.

If both parties are equally responsible, no one will get compensation. There are also cases where the victim has no responsibility at all. Defendants will try to put blame on you to lower what they have to pay. Personal injury lawyers work to counter evidence like that.

Call MDSW Legal for Help If You’ve Been Injured

If you’ve been injured for any reason, our Johns Island personal injury lawyers are ready to stand up for your right to compensation. Reach out to Miller, Dawson, Sigal & Ward by calling the number on your screen or by using our online contact form. Your consultation and call are free, and you do not have to pay us anything unless you win your case.