Irvine Car Accidents

After a car accident that resulted in devastating injuries, you may be contacted by the insurance adjustor for the other driver. In most cases, the adjustor will be friendly, but his or her goal is to obtain an admission of liability from you that will let his or her insured off the hook or at least reduce liability. You should always consult an attorney about whether you may have a case. Another driver's insurance adjustor does not owe you a duty of loyalty. An experienced Irvine car accident attorney at Sharifi Firm can help you build a persuasive claim for compensation.

In many car accident cases, you will need to establish another driver's negligence by a preponderance of the evidence in order to recover damages. This means that you will need to show that another driver's actions or omissions breached the duty to use reasonable care while operating the car, and this breach caused the accident that resulted in your injuries and damages.

If you can successfully show negligence, you probably will be able to recover compensatory damages. These include both concrete, economic losses like medical bills, lost income, and lost earning capacity as well as more subjective, noneconomic losses like pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of consortium.

However, the other driver may argue that you were partly responsible. Comparative negligence is an argument that a plaintiff's own negligence caused his or her injuries, either partially or fully. The jury may determine the total amount of damages and then assign a percentage of responsibility to the other driver and to you. Your damages will be reduced by an amount equal to your percentage of responsibility, if any.

In some cases, a dangerous road or a defective part causes a car accident or combines with a driver's negligence to result in a crash. If there are multiple parties potentially at fault for an accident, the doctrine of joint and several liability may arise. This is the rule that defendants jointly and severally share in the responsibility for an accident, such that any one defendant may be held responsible for the plaintiff's total damages, even if that defendant is only slightly at fault.

In California, this rule applies to economic damages but not to noneconomic losses. Thus, if a victim’s economic damages are valued at $50,000, even a defendant who was only 10% responsible for the car accident may be held responsible for the full $50,000. However, each defendant is only severally responsible for his or her share of a plaintiff's noneconomic losses.

Located in Orange County, Irvine is a planned city that CNNMoney.com ranked as the fourth-best place to live in the country as of 2008. It has been the site of numerous film shoots, including the shoots for A Scanner Darkly, Planet of the Apes, Zero Dark Thirty, and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Irvine is considered a safe and affluent city. However, car accidents involving serious injuries may happen there, just as they do elsewhere in Southern California. At Sharifi Firm, APC, our Irvine car accident lawyers may be able to help you recover compensation for your injuries after a crash. We have the trial experience necessary to vigorously negotiate with insurers. Call us at (866) 422-7222 or use our online form to set up a free consultation with a motor vehicle collision lawyer.