August 24, 2020

Legal Expenses for Motor Vehicle Accident Claims

How Much Will Your Claim Cost and How Much Will You Get?

Our initial consultations are free to discuss your motor vehicle accident claim. We’ll discuss your options following a car accident in Alberta. We can help you make informed decisions about the value of your claim and give you information about possible legal expenses. We keep all details of your case confidential.

If there is a mutual fit and agreement, our personal injury clients pay us on a contingency fee basis, which means our legal fees and disbursements are paid from the settlement or judgment we recover. A contingency fee means that the firm will not get paid any legal fees unless you recover money in your case. Our law firm will get paid a percentage of money received from any insurance settlement or judgment.

You must also have completed the appropriate care and treatment before we can evaluate the process and claim.

How Is A Personal Injury Claim Calculated?

We have a fault-based system for car accident injury claims in Alberta. That means an injured person is only entitled to injury compensation if they are found to not be at fault for a car accident.

Depending on the nature of the injuries, how long it will take for you to recover, the healthcare required and the impact on your ability to earn an income are factors to calculate a personal injury claim. There are three categories of damages:

Future healthcare costs
Loss of enjoyment of life (pain and suffering)
Loss of earning capacity

The longer it takes to recover, the bigger the potential settlement. Your age can also be a big factor. For example, a 15-year-old with catastrophic injuries will experience losses over a longer period than a 55-year-old and have the potential for a much larger claim.

What Are Legal Expenses and Who Pays for Them?

Disbursements are monies paid out in expert reports and other cash and legal expenses such as filing, courier and medical reports for reimbursements. We will cover the cost of the expenses related to running a claim, and these expenses are known as disbursements. You want a personal injury lawyer who will cover your disbursements for you while your claim is ongoing.

Disbursements include things like the cost of a medical report from a doctor or a treatment record from a hospital, and total disbursements on a claim can run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars based on the severity of the injuries. These may include court filing fees, fees for medical and expert reports, computer printouts, photocopying, fax, courier, postage, binding of document books, long distance telephone calls and other necessary related expenses.

We generally carry the cost of the disbursements until the case reaches a settlement or until damages are awarded at trial. Then disbursement costs are deducted from the settlement amount.

What is Your Contingency Fee?

Our contingency is tiered from 27.5% to 40% depending on where you’re at in the litigation process, such as discovery, pre-trial and trial. If your case is settled early in the process, the contingency is the minimum and if your case is settled at trial the contingency is the maximum.

Our initial consultations are free to discuss your motor vehicle accident case. You can talk to one of our experienced lawyers to determine the compensation and costs for your injury claim with case law similar to your injuries. We will help you understand what experts need to be brought in to evaluate your claim and how we can negotiate with the at-fault insurance company on your behalf. We can also explain the litigation process if we need to file a lawsuit.

Experienced Injury Lawyers

Hiring experienced personal injury lawyers helps ensure that your case is dealt with professionally, smoothly and with minimum stress to you and your family. Our team of experienced injury lawyers have years of experience and have been around long enough to know what compensation people typically receive for injuries like yours.

Contact our Personal Injury Team to book your free consultation.