Personal injury

What we handle

Most of our injury work falls into a few kinds of case. The larger ones have their own page; the rest are covered further down this one.

• Car accidents What to do first, what insurers will and will not cover, uninsured drivers, shared fault.
• Truck accidents Federal rules, more than one responsible party, and records that are not kept forever.
• Slips and falls When a property owner is responsible for a fall, and what the claim has to show.
• Bicycle accidents How drivers cause them, and why the first days matter.
• Dog bites Missouri holds the owner responsible without proof that the dog was vicious.
• Premises liability Hazards on someone else’s property, beyond a fall.

Hurt at work? That is usually a workers’ compensation matter, with its own system and its own deadlines.

What a claim has to show

Nearly every injury claim comes down to negligence: the other person had a duty to take reasonable care, did not, and that failure caused your injury. A driver who runs a light, a store that leaves a spill on the floor for an hour, a landlord who never fixes the stair rail — the duty is different in each case, but the shape of the claim is the same.

Missouri compares fault. If you were partly responsible, your share reduces what you recover; it does not, by itself, end the claim. Insurers know this, and it is often the first thing they argue.

Insurers also know that the record is thin in the first days. Photographs, the names of witnesses, the report number and the treating doctor’s notes carry more weight than anyone’s memory months later.

What a claim can include

Depending on the facts, a claim can cover:

• Medical bills so far, and the treatment still to come
• Lost wages, and lost earning capacity where the injury is lasting
• Pain and suffering
• Permanent injury, disability or scarring
• Loss of the ability to do the things you did before
• In a death, the losses to the family

What a claim can include depends on its facts. Nothing here predicts an outcome.

Bicycle accidents

A cyclist has nothing between them and the vehicle. Even a low-speed collision can produce a serious injury, and the driver’s insurer will often start from the assumption that the cyclist was in the wrong place.

Drivers cause bicycle crashes when they:

• drift into a bike lane or onto the shoulder
• open a door without looking
• drive distracted by a phone or a screen
• drive impaired
• turn at an intersection without looking or signaling
• follow too closely
• speed

If one of these played a part in your crash, the claim is the same negligence claim as a car crash, and the same first steps apply: get treated, get the report number, and keep the bike as it is.

Dog bites

Missouri’s dog-bite statute, section 273.036, RSMo, makes a dog’s owner strictly liable for a bite that happens without provocation, on public property or on private property where the injured person was lawfully present, including the owner’s own. No proof is needed that the dog had shown any viciousness before, or that the owner knew of it. The liability also reaches a person who has possession of the dog when the bite happens — the friend who is minding it while the owner is away.

Two things limit it. A bite that was provoked, or that happened where the injured person had no right to be, falls outside the statute; and any other fault on the injured person’s part reduces the recovery by their share. Insurers routinely deny dog-bite claims on exactly those grounds, which is why the first account of what happened matters so much.

A bite claim can include the medical treatment, scarring, and the psychological effects, which are often the longest-lasting part of the injury.

Premises liability

A property owner who invites people onto the property owes them three things: reasonably safe conditions, a warning about hazards the owner knows or should know of, and a fix within a reasonable time once a hazard is discovered. Stores, supermarkets, parking structures, event venues and apartment complexes are the usual settings.

Premises claims include:

• Slip and fall injuries
• Dog bites
• Inadequate security
• Swimming pool injuries
• Exposure to hazardous materials, such as lead paint
• Any defective condition on the property that leads to an injury

The burden is on the injured person to show that the duty was owed and that the failure caused the injury. That means documenting the scene, finding the witnesses, and, when it helps, bringing in someone who can speak to how the property should have been kept. For the most common case, a fall, see slips and falls.

How a claim moves

1. Get treated. Your health comes first, and the medical record is the spine of the claim.
2. We gather the record: the incident or police report, photographs, witness names, the medical chart, and the insurance information on every side.
3. We put the insurers on notice, so nothing is said to them without us and the file is preserved.
4. We make a demand once the extent of the injury is known — usually after treatment has run its course, because a claim settled before then is settled blind.
5. If the insurer will not resolve it fairly, we file suit. Most claims settle before trial; the ones that do not are tried.