What Should I Do After a Car Accident?

The most important thing you can do after a car accident is try to recover from your injuries. The law requires you to mitigate your damages, which means taking the necessary steps to recover from the injuries you have sustained as a result of the car accident.

This means communicating regularly with your doctor and not missing your scheduled appointments. If you don’t show up to appointments with your doctor, your records will indicate this, and this fact will probably be used against you at your car accident trial as evidence that your car accident injury was not severe enough to motivate you to seek the necessary medical treatment.

It also means following your doctor’s medical advice. This includes, most obviously, taking prescribed medications, but depending on the circumstances of your car accident injury, it may also include physical therapy or restrictions on what you cannot do.

Physical therapy is often an important part of your doctor’s recovery plan for your car accident injuries. It is most frequently helpful in the case of strains, sprains, and other “soft tissue” injuries. Treat these physical therapy sessions as seriously as you would doctor’s appointments, taking prescribed medicine, or other medical procedures. It is important that you not only attend these therapy sessions but make a serious effort to do what is asked of you during these sessions. Half-hearted attempts at recovery do not meet your legal obligation to “mitigate your damages.”

If you must cancel an appointment for treatment for your car accident injuries, whether it’s a meeting with a doctor, a physical therapy session, or another medical appointment, be sure to call as far in advance as possible. This is preferable to a no-show, but it will still reflect negatively on you in your car accident injury trial and should be avoided.

Finally, follow your doctor’s advice on restrictions on work and leisure activities. Resisting your doctor’s advice and doing restricted activities will hinder your recovery from the injuries you sustained in your car accident, and it will also potentially lower the value of your car accident lawsuit. If you are able to do normal activities without much difficulty, your car accident attorney will have a harder time convincing a jury that your injuries are as severe as you claim.

If you have been injured in a car accident, please contact Law Office Of Samer Habbas  at (888) 848-5084 for a free consultation, or fill out the case evaluation form on this website.

What If I Have to Miss Work Because of a Car Accident?

If you are seriously injured in a car accident, it is important to follow your doctor’s medical advice about what you can and cannot do as a result of your injuries. Your doctor will give you advice about what you should do to improve your medical condition (physical therapy, prescribing medicine, etc.), and also about what you should avoid doing because it could worsen your condition.

Following a doctor’s medical advice is helpful in terms of actually recovering from the injuries you sustained in the car accident, but it is also important for your car accident lawyer’s case that you follow the prescribed course of treatment-including following your doctor’s advice about what activities you should avoid.

There are many leisure activities that you obviously should not do after a car accident injury. For example, marathon-running, rock climbing, and skiing are probably inadvisable after you have suffered a serious strain or sprain in a car accident. Leisure activities such as these, while fun, should be relatively easy for you to put on hold in the aftermath of your injury, especially if you are in severe pain.

One activity you may be tempted to do, even if your car accident injury makes it extremely difficult, is going to work. Medical bills may be piling up, your car could have been damaged or totaled in the accident, and cutting off your main source of income will seem especially difficult because of these financial pressures.

However, if your doctor advises you not to go to work because of your medical condition following your car accident, it is important that you follow his or her advice. An experienced car accident attorney will attempt to recover lost earnings as part of your car accident lawsuit, and a failure to heed your doctor’s advice not to work will be seen by the jury or the opposing party as being noncompliant with your treatment.

If your doctor has advised you not to work because of injuries sustained in a car accident and you want a car accident attorney to advise you about what to do, please contact me at (888) 848-5084 for a free consultation.