I remember seeing coverage of airplane crashes on the evening news when I was kid and they were always talking about looking for the “black box” to help them understand what happened. Nowadays, most vehicles have one of these things, too. So when you have an auto accident there’s a good chance that your EDR (Event Data Recorder) will have a lot of information to help us understand what happened in your crash.

You might automatically assume that you should get that data when you have an injury claim. And you might be right. But you might also be wrong. How do you make this decision?

Like with a lot of aspects of these claims, it’s a tactical decision that may be influenced by several factors. The first thing you should look at is the cost. You’re likely to spend at least $1000 of your money, up front, to get this information from your vehicle. So how does that impact your decision? Well, if you’ve got a chiropractic case that’s probably worth under $10,000, then you may not want to spend $1000 up front, as it may not give you any information that will be necessary (or even helpful) to pursue your claim. On the other hand, the more significant injuries and treatment you’re enduring, the more incentive you have to get that data.

But what will it show? A lot. Here’s a list I blatantly borrowed from another blog post (https://www.devaughnjames.com/blog/can-your-cars-event-data-recorder-black-box-help-your-accident-claim/):

• Pre-crash vehicle operational dynamics such as the speed, use of accelerator, engine RPM, use of steering wheel.
• Crash force, both forward and lateral.
• Crash duration.
• Application of brakes and activation of antilock brake.
• Change in speed after impact.
• Activation of fault codes or warning signals.
• Engagement of stability control.
• Vehicle roll angle.
• Number of ignition attempts after the accident.
• Use of restraint and engagement of pretension and force-limiter for front seat occupants.
• Position of front seats.
• Size (weight) of front seat occupants.
• Number of impacts.
• Deployment of airbags, speed of deployment and faults, if any.
• Activation of the automatic collision notification system.

That could be a lot of help. Or it could hurt your claim. A fair amount of thought should go into the decision to get this information. This is all the more reason you should have an attorney to help guide you if you’re in a serious automobile accident. Call me at 919-929-2992.

Being on top of Communication regarding your accident claim is critical to its success. What do I mean by that? A couple of things: First, DON’T talk to people you shouldn’t be talking to about your claim. Second, DO talk to your lawyer. That’s it.

Would that it were so simple for everyone to follow these brief instructions.

After your injury claim, you have to be aware that you are in an adversarial relationship with an insurance company whose sole goal is to minimize their exposure in your claim. I often tell clients to think of it like an arrest: Everything you say CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU by the insurance company. So what do you do? More like, what DON’T you do…

• Don’t talk to the insurance adjuster about your injuries. Talk about property damage if you must, but NOT about your injuries, treatment, recovery, etc. Don’t even answer the question, “How are you doing?” Just don’t.
• Don’t go on social media about your claim or your injuries. It might seem innocuous, but there’s a great saying in this business: When you’re explaining, you’re losing. Don’t give yourself anything you have to explain away. Just don’t.
• Don’t threaten to, much less actually, “go to the media” about how the insurance company is treating you. It’s not a good look and will likely only end up doing you harm. Just don’t.

But affirmative communication is also important. What does that mean?

• Talk to your attorney any time s/he writes, emails, calls, or whatever form of communication you guys agree to (I personally won’t text clients unless it’s absolutely necessary, but whatever). Making sure your attorney knows what’s going on with your health and recovery is critical to planning for the best strategy in your claim.
• This is worth two bullet points…ANSWER the questions your attorney asks you. I can’t tell you how many cases have atrophied because my clients couldn’t be bothered to tell me something about their care and recovery when I asked about it, or couldn’t see fit to follow directions I gave them.
• Be open to your healthcare providers about conditions you relate to this accident. If you hit your head and think you have a concussion, 6 months after the accident isn’t the time to bring it up. When you seek care following your accident, talk to your providers about EVERYTHING that seems to have changed since the accident. The sooner you get things checked out, the more likely we’ll be able to causally link them to your accident.
• If you’ve been told to keep a pain journal – do that. I always tell clients to write at least about three things: What hurts? How badly? How is it affecting your day to day life? If you can get that in every day until you’re better, you’ll have an amazingly impactful journal.

Essentially, this is a know when to talk and when not to talk question. The easy answer is be very open with healthcare providers and your attorney, but don’t talk to the insurance company at all if you can avoid it. It’s only likely to go poorly if you do.

Clients ask me all the time, “How long is this claim going to take?” And I have a cheeky answer: “How long is it going to take you to get better?” I think that’s informative, but my clients sometimes just think I’m a smart@$$.

I get it. Injury claim victims really want to know what they’re in for. Who wouldn’t? But the thing is, claims are so varied in so many aspects it’s really hard to tell how long each claim is going to take.

My cheeky answer above is informative in that the longest part of most claims is going to be the recovery. We can’t really evaluate your claim’s value until your treatment is done (or at least plateaued), which doesn’t happen until you reach maximum medical improvement.

I can’t tell you how long your claim is going to take. But I can tell you a much closer estimate after you’re done with treatment.

Of course, there are lots of different points of your claim process. The treatment stage is normally the longest bit. But as time goes on, the documentation stage is becoming more and more prolonged. That is the stage where we amass all of the documents we need to prove what you’ve lost as a result of your claim. For most claims this is mainly the collection of treatment records and bills from health care providers. The tricky bit about this is that EVERY facility has their own rules about how you request materials. Some places want you to get records from them but bills from somewhere else. Some places want you to get bills from them but records from somewhere else. Some places don’t want you to talk to them at all. Some times you go to a place and get billed by two or three different places. Some will tell you where they do want you to request stuff from. Some places will tell you to send them the request and then ignore it until you send it again and then CALL them. And the thing is, you don’t know this stuff until you deal with that particular health care provider. And even then, they change this stuff at whim, and have NO obligation to tell you about it.

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re frustrated with the time it’s taking to get your claim done. Lots of things can make your claim take a long time, but I’ll be willing to bet that your documentation phase is going to be your main source of frustration here. It is NOT as easy as calling up your doc and saying, “Send me the stuff,” and then badda bing, badda boom you get it. Most of the time, it takes weeks, if not months, to get records and bills from all of the various facilities that have given you care or charged you for care related to your injury. I wish that was not the case, but it just is. I do my best to make all aspects of your claim move quickly, but I can’t control places I don’t run, and I don’t run the hospitals or doctor’s offices or PT places. And remember, I don’t get paid until I get your case resolved, so you know I have ZERO interest in delaying it, if for no other reason than that.

These things take time. More time than we like. But we do our best.

You would think, what with this being ‘Murica, land of transparent government and freedom and all of that, getting your accident report would be pretty easy.

It ain’t.

If you’re in an accident, you would think all you have to do is call the law enforcement agency that investigated it and ask them nicely and badda bing badda boom, you get it. But that doesn’t always happen. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it does. But there’s a spectrum of difficulty you’ll face. Some agencies require you to come in person, with ID. Some require you to go to a website and find it. Some require you to call this person, who may or may not respond to your voice mail. It’s all over the place.

As an attorney, I have only a slightly better chance of getting that report, oddly enough. I do have access to this antiquated database run by the DMV called “crashweb” (which is hilarious when you think about it) and most of the time I can get the reports I need to better represent my clients. But that’s a) totally dependent on the investigating agency doing the report AND getting it sent to DMV (neither of which are guaranteed) AND b) totally dependent on that site working, too (which is definitely not guaranteed).

The great irony of this is that right after your accident, I bet you got about 20 copies of your accident report in the mail. And they were sent to you by attorneys that don’t represent you or anyone else in the accident, but they want to! Those are direct mail solicitations which are (currently) legal in NC. The wacky bit about this is those law offices buy this data from companies that send little moles into the law enforcement agencies that give YOU, the victim, SO MUCH grief when you try to get your own report, and these little rabbits are given access to scan ALL of these reports, which are then sold to law offices that do direct mail solicitations.

Why is this frustrating? On the one hand, you, the victim, and me, the attorney representing the victim, have a harder time getting accident reports than the people who don’t have ANYTHING to do with the accident AT ALL, but are just sending advertisements! Should it be that way? I wouldn’t think so. Will it continue to be that way? I don’t know for sure. I don’t have a problem in general with direct mail advertisements, but I do have a problem with capitalism giving big firms better access to MY CLIENT’S information than I have.

Like with many aspects of auto accidents, it gets complicated. All the more reason you should call an attorney. Call me at 919-929-2992.

The VAST majority of my clients are wonderful, realistic, grounded, grateful people who seem to sincerely appreciate what I do for them. I am eternally grateful for them.

This post is not for them.

Sometimes I get a very unexpected response from clients when I keep them from wasting a day (or three!) in traffic court and save their driver’s license while minimizing their insurance consequences. Sometimes – believe it or not – people get mad at me for doing all of that.

As a professional service provider, it is best for me to try to be patient and understand a client’s concerns, even when they don’t seem to make any sense to me, and to try to explain the reality of their situation to them in a clear but inoffensive way. This works most of the time. What is probably necessary in those rarer occasions is a bit of real talk, though. And while it’s not my first resort with any client, I think it’s worth putting out here for the general public.

What does the DA not care about?

The DA does not care who your dad or mom is. The DA does not care that you’re in grad school. The DA doesn’t care about your prestigious career. Do you even hear yourself? You were all upset when Rapey McCollegedude got a light sentence because of his dad’s money, but when it comes to your ticket this sort of argument is totally acceptable all of a sudden. Not the same? Both are crimes, both have punishments. Remember the blindfold on Blind Justice? Doesn’t that make more sense now when you think about it?

What does the DA care about?

The DA cares about making the district she’s/he’s elected to protect a safer place. That means enforcing safety laws like speed limits. People sometimes think that traffic tickets are simply given to a) piss people off, and/or b) generate revenue. This is a common misconception. Tickets are given to discourage dangerous driving. And yes, speeding can be dangerous. For example, the DA in Orange Co. has a totally different policy for handling speeding tickets on MLK Blvd in Chapel Hill because people die there because of speeding. That’s right. People get run over there all the time because of careless driving. They get hurt and they sometimes die because you’re not paying attention or the BBC just told you that Harry is having another baby and you’re so excited or you’re mad that your BFF didn’t like your new pants. None of these things are good enough reasons to get people killed, so maybe slow the F down.

The DA does care about your driving record. So yes, if this is your first ticket that helps you. But that isn’t the proverbial “get out of jail free card.” I tell people all the time that it’s not like we all get one free murder. If you commit a crime, you commit a crime and you have to deal with the consequences. Speeding is a crime, too. It’s a lesser crime, for sure, I get it. Your record does impact what the DA will want you to feel from this ticket. Charged with 80 in a 65 and have a clean record? Cool. Have an Improper Equipment, pay your fine, lesson learned. Charged with 98 in a 35 and have a clean record. Not the same thing at all. You’re going to have consequences on that one and you need to understand that.

You may be thinking, “Wow, Jeffrey. You don’t sound like much of a defense attorney. What about the old ‘innocent until proven guilty’ stuff?”

I hear ya. But let’s have some real talk about that…

Yes, you are innocent until proven guilty. But, you know what it takes to prove your guilt on a speeding ticket? The officer’s testimony as to his opinion that you were speeding. That’s it. So realistically, we could have a trial on your speeding ticket if you really want to have your day in court. Totally cool. You’ll have to be in court probably about 5 times to notify the court that you want a trial and to give the cop time to arrange his schedule to show up. Then you’ll be there pretty much all day. The cop will say you were speeding. You better not ask to get on the stand because I can’t allow you to perjure yourself when they ask if you were speeding. Then you’ll be found guilty. Good job. Oh, and I’ll have to charge you about $3000 for all of that time I’ve had to burn waiting around for that idiocy. Nobody wants that. Nobody.

The point is that you probably were speeding. And you would be found guilty at a trial. So my job, what you’re paying me a relatively small amount of money to do for you, is to try to minimize the consequences that you’d be facing. Isn’t that a good thing? Don’t you want a better deal? Is it that big of a deal that you have to do an online driving school? So when I keep you out of court, save your license, and lower your insurance points (thereby keeping your premiums lower than they would be) aren’t you glad?

We all make decisions that have negative repercussions. We all make mistakes. Being an adult is accepting those consequences and learning from them. If you want a be a child and whine about it, that’s up to you, but children don’t have driver’s licenses, so just remember that.

Auto Accident claims are complicated enough: Liability concerns, stupid contributory negligence in North Carolina, the “billed v. paid” legislation change, causation arguments. None of it is fun. But if you want even more drudgery and delay in your claim, go get some accident-related treatment at the Veterans Administration hospital.

All health care providers take longer than they should to get us records and bills. But I can deal with a wait of a few weeks or a month if necessary. But the VA takes MONTHS to get records and bills. AND while the VA offers “free” care to veterans, that care isn’t exactly free if it’s related to an accident claim, because they want to get paid back! And that process takes FOREVER too!

Nothing is easy with the VA, sadly. Everything takes longer and is more complicated. If you’re in an auto accident and end up getting treatment at the VA, that’s fine, but make sure you get the help you need ASAP. Your case is going to be trickier than normal. Call an attorney. Call me. 919-929-2992.

You would think that intersection accidents would give us the clearest liability argument…You had the green light, they didn’t, there ya go. But in North Carolina intersection accidents are often the worst when it comes to deciding liablity.

North Carolina has a relic of English Common Law still on the books: Contributory Negligence. What that says, in summary, is that if you’re even 1% at fault in your accident, you can’t get ANYTHING from the person who’s 99% at fault! Here’s a slightly longer summary by a really handsome dude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYUfBv5LM8U. Most other states have Comparative Negligence, so in that above fact pattern you could get 99% of your damages. That’s fair, right? But how does this come up in intersection accidents so much?

Even when you have the right of way, given you so graciously by your green light, you still have a duty to “see before starting” as one statute puts it. You have to make sure no one’s coming into the intersection because if it turns out you just blithely carried on just because you had the green light with no worries about anything, you might be that 1% at fault and then your case is sunk.

The best way to combat this is to be really careful. Even when you have a green light, make sure no one is coming from the other directions. The other way to combat this is to be very careful when giving a statement about how your accident occurs. Remember that adjusters are trained to ask you questions in a way that solicit answers that may be unfavorable to your case. Be careful!

If you’re in an intersection accident, call an attorney. Call me. 919-929-2992.

So you got a traffic ticket in North Carolina and you’re hoping it’s just gonna go away. Not so fast, my friend!

I know, I know, the reason you’re hiring an attorney is because you want your ticket to not hurt so bad. THAT’S a reasonable expectation, depending on the ticket of course. In most circumstances, having an attorney that’s familiar with the policies of that particular jurisdiction will help you get an outcome that won’t be quite as bad as it might have been if you represented yourself. If the ticket is low enough, you might even reasonably hope to get out of it with no insurance points, which is ideal.

But if you have a ticket that’s really fast – like 20+ over the limit – then you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you go ahead and adjust your expectations now. If you have one of these situations, you’re in what I call Damage Control mode. By that I mean my main goal is to save your driver license and anything we get on top of that is gravy. When you’re charged with 16+ over the limit and doing more than 55, pleading guilty to that ticket can revoke your license in NC, so this has to be our first reasonable goal – to save your license. Hoping for anything above that is simply imprudent.

Don’t get me wrong; if you hire me for a ticket like that, I’ll do my best to minimize all of the consequences for you. It’s just best if you understand that the main thing I’ll try to do is save your license. Minimizing your insurance points will in some ways go hand in hand with that, but that’s a secondary concern compared to you potentially losing your license.

People think tickets aren’t that big of a deal, and sometimes they aren’t, but sometimes they can be a HUGE deal. So get some good advice before you formulate an idea as to what to expect. Call me at 919-929-2992.

Very rarely do I tell a potential client that it’s OK to just pay off a traffic ticket they’ve received in North Carolina. But sometimes it happens, so I thought I’d remind my lovely audience about when that might be OK.

If you get JUST a seat belt ticket (NO OTHER CHARGES – JUST THE SEAT BELT!) then you might as well pay that off. This is not a moving violation and won’t increase your insurance rates. In most counties that I serve, even an attorney won’t be able to get the case dismissed. Moreover, the cost of the ticket will probably be less than hiring an attorney, who might not be able to help you in the first place. So take that into account.

If you are charged with speeding 10 mph over the limit (NO MORE!) AND you DO NOT have any other convictions of moving violations within 3 years of this one, then you can pay off that ticket. You won’t get insurance points (these exist, but are waived under a NC law) so your rates won’t increase. BUT, if you get convicted of a moving violation within three years of paying that one off, then you will not only get the points from the subsequent ticket, you’ll “awaken” the points from the previous one! That’s a gamble, and it might not be a good one, depending on how you drive. Normally, especially in the counties I serve, hiring an attorney is probably worth the cost given the likelihood of the reduction s/he can obtain for you. But that’s a judgment call.

That’s it. Those are probably the only times I’d say paying off a ticket makes some sense. But as always, I think it makes sense to talk with a lawyer about your particular situation before you take any action. Call me at 919-929-2992.

It might seem unlikely, but this is an all-too-common occurrence: Person is involved in an auto accident, only to be involved in another auto accident within a few months of the first. How will this work out?

Depending on your situation, I might be pretty bad. The problem with two cases is they can, arguably, fatally damage your causation argument as to your injuries. The liability carrier for the first accident might say, “Maybe you were hurt in this accident, but anything after the second is on them.” While the liability carrier for the second accident might say, “You were already hurt before the second accident so we don’t think this one hurt you at all.” The problem is juries might believe both of those arguments, leaving you with less of a recovery than you might actually deserve.

How you move forward is greatly impacted by your perception of your injuries from each impact, but also by other factors such as the opinions of your healthcare providers, the length of time between accidents, the severity of the impacts, and your diagnoses, of course. There are a lot of moving parts, which means a lot can go wrong.

Sadly, there’s no way to fix this sort of situation. It can only be managed, and that is based very much on the facts of your scenario coupled with a deep understanding of how claims are evaluated. If you find yourself in the midst of an auto accident injury claim, heaven forbid two at a time, please do yourself a favor and call an attorney. Call me at 919-929-2992.