Which claims you might be able to take to small claims court without a lawyer? As a general rule of thumb, you case should not involve

• serious long-term or permanently disabling injuries
• severe injuries
• medical malpractice
• toxic exposure

If you case does not involve these issues, the insurance company may well be willing to negotiate and settle out of court. Many times, it’s simply cheaper for them to pay you than to prolong the fight.

By far the most common types of personal injury claims are due to automobile accidents. Other types of accidents that can result in personal injury include:

• Automobile accidents
• Trucking accidents
• Motorcycle accidents
• Bus accidents
• Defective vehicles
• Wrongful death
• Animal bites
• Slip and Fall

More than one person may be responsible for your injuries. Depending upon the circumstances of your accident, an employer of the negligent party may be responsible as well if the person was on the clock at the time of the accident. It is a good idea to contact an experienced Michigan personal injury attorney to make sure you get the compensation you deserve for your injuries and pain and suffering.

Most people think that a personal injury claim is a car or motor vehicle accident claim. While an injury sustained in an automobile accident where another was at fault would be a personal injury claim, there are many other matters that also fall under that heading.

A personal injury attorney  handles matters where there has been a personal injury, either physical or emotional, which was caused by the negligence of another. If there was no negligence then there is no case. There must be negligence, whether intentional or unintentional, on the part of someone else, for a claim to be valid. In other words, you would have trouble making a case against your landlord, where you spilled water on your kitchen floor and then slipped and fell because of the water. However, if the landlord had failed to fix the plumbing under your sink and the water was on the floor because of leaky plumbing then you may have a case. There are other variables that could come into play and you would need to seek the advice of a good personal injury attorney, in order to determine your rights.

There are many matters other than car accident matters that can many times be included under personal injury, i.e., slips and falls, workplace accidents (after a workplace accident you may be covered under workers compensation or disability but you may also have a personal injury claim), injuries caused during a storm or power outage, airplane, bus and train crashes, construction accidents, fires, food poisoning, drug or vitamin overdoses, animal bites, getting beat up, robbed or otherwise injured inside or outside of a business, medical malpractice and even malpractice by an attorney.

There are many variables that can come into play in determining negligence and many times you may think that there was no negligence on the part of anyone when there actually was. I myself, know of a case where a party was struck by a car while riding a motorcycle and injured severely. He settled with the driver and the driver’s insurance company for the $100,000.00 maximum of the driver’s insurance policy. This settlement did not even begin to cover his medical bills. Some time later, a personal injury attorney, while speaking with a member of the injured party’s family, found about the case and was asked to look into it for the family. The injured party was broke and paralyzed. The attorney did some checking and then agreed that, even though the man had accepted the settlement, there might still be a case. He then hired my detective agency and another to do further research. Finally, he filed a law suit against the car driver, the drivers insurance company, the motorcycle manufacturer and others. I won’t go into the whole case, but suffice it to say that he went to trial and ended up obtaining a verdict against several of the parties, including the drivers insurance company and the motorcycle manufacturer, for several million dollars and the injured party is no longer broke. I might add that the attorney took the case on contingency and advanced, out of his own pocket, all of the expenses including court costs and investigation fees.

The point of the foregoing is that if you have been injured, you should seek the advice of a competent personal injury attorney even if you don’t think that there is anyone at fault. Only a good experienced personal injury attorney can attempt to make that determination.