Have you been harmed in an accident caused by someone else?
Stone Rose Law is a team of experienced Scottsdale personal injury lawyers who are ready to fight for your rights and the answers that you deserve. At our Scottsdale office, we provide top-quality legal representation to accident victims throughout Arizona and achieve outstanding results. Learn more about how we can help you after a devastating accident in Arizona.
Contact us at (480) 498-8998 for a free case consultation.
Our lead attorneys have decades of experience in personal injury law. Our team of trial attorneys provide legal support for all the following types of personal injury cases, among others:
If you are injured in an accident in Arizona, and another person or a business is involved in it, then Arizona law governs whether you have a claim, or “cause of action” against that person or business.
To have a legal claim, for personal injury, you must prove four basic elements:
This duty typically consists of a responsibility to avoid causing you harm. Thus duty can be a duty to act, or a duty to refrain from doing something that could lead to harm.
For example, other drivers on the road with you have a duty to you to drive their vehicles safely and in accordance with traffic laws. Your doctor has a duty to not cause you harm while treating you. A business that you visit as a customer has a duty to keep its premises safe for you to use.
The person who owes you a duty of care must have failed to observe that duty. Returning to our examples above, that other driver must have failed to drive safely. That doctor must have caused you harm in treatment. That business you went to must have failed to maintain the safety of its premises.
The act of the other person or business, or its failure to act, must have led to direct or “proximate” harm to you in the form of an injury.
How much you can recover in money damages as compensation for personal injury is limited only by how much harm you can prove you suffered.
You could face some practical limits on the amount of a damages award, however. These include, for example, the negligent party’s ability to pay, including liability insurance policy limits. In other cases, especially ones that award large sums in exemplary or “punitive” damages, the initial damages award might be reduced on appeal.
Many times accidents that cause personal injury are not entirely the fault of only one person. Sometimes you can be partly at fault. This is not fatal to your legal claim, but it can lower the amount of your recovery.
For example, let’s say that you were involved in an auto accident in which the other driver crossed the centerline, but you were driving faster than the speed limit when the accident happened. The other driver may be mostly at fault, but if your speed contributed to the accident then under Arizona law the responsibility for the accident will be split between you and the other person on a percentage basis: if the other driver is 90 percent at fault and you were 10 percent at fault, then any money damages you might recover from the other driver will be reduced by 10 percent.
This is called “comparative negligence.” What this means is that your money damages award from a personal injury case can be reduced by up to 99 percent if you are found to have been partly at fault for the accident, but you can still recover at least that 1 percent that is the other person’s fault.
Direct harm injuries are those that you can show came from the personal injury accident and had no other cause. These are injuries that you can usually prove through records of medical treatment, including your billings from health care providers, that you had to go through as a result of the injury.
Direct harm damages are not confined to physical injuries. If you resolve your personal injury claim through litigation or arbitration then if you prevail, all the harms you have suffered will, as much as possible, be converted into a single compensatory judgment award. Damage to your property caused by the other person in the same incident is one kind of direct harm to roll into your total direct harm damages calculation.
Unlike direct harm damages, indirect harm is often not something you can measure through medical bills or property repair and replacement costs. Indirect injuries are nonetheless real, and compensable.
You might see indirect damages referred to as “pain and suffering” awards or damages for emotional harm. Examples include:
The two kinds of money damages you can receive for personal injury claims are compensatory damages and exemplary damages.
Compensatory damages restore you as much as possible for the losses and harms you suffered because of the personal injury event. This includes the direct and indirect harms above.
In some court cases, the behavior of the person or company that caused you injury is bad enough that the court will allow an additional damages award on top of compensatory damages.
Not all personal injury awards include exemplary damages. The possibility of receiving exemplary damages increases when the party that caused the harm acted in a way that shows intent to cause harm, grossly negligent or reckless behaviors, or repeated past harmful conduct.
Some examples in which courts have imposed exemplary damages include defective product designs that the manufacturer knew would cause harm to some customers, engaging in illegal activities, or medical malpractice and hospital negligence-related patient injuries.
You might also see exemplary damages called, “punitive damages.” What is important to keep in mind with exemplary damages is that although you may benefit from them in your case, they are mainly meant as a warning to others not to make the same mistake. Thus the name, “exemplary damages.”
There are no defined limits to what you can receive for a personal injury claim other than what you can prove.
However, some practical limits do exist.
For example, if whoever caused your injury does not have the money or other assets to pay a damages award, then your recovery may be reduced and you may need to resort to less direct methods of collection, like a judgment lien.
If the court holds you partly responsible for the injury event, then your award will be reduced by the percentage of your fault. A defendant can appeal the amount of a damages award, and sometimes the court on its own can reduce the initial award.
Exemplary damages are also subject to an Arizona Supreme Court limitation that acts as a cap. If exemplary damages are more than three times the compensatory damages award, then that sum is unconstitutional in Arizona.
Having an experienced attorney on your side takes the burden off you of knowing Arizona personal injury laws. You do not need to understand court procedural rules that apply to a personal injury lawsuit. And attorneys for the other side must communicate with us, not you.
A quality plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer knows how to prepare your case for settlement negotiation or trial. This includes gathering witness statements, doing accident scene investigations, reviewing police reports, obtaining your relevant medical treatment records, and, if need be, obtaining expert witnesses.
Arizona law does not prevent you from being your own lawyer in your personal injury claim. Still, there are sound reasons why having an experienced personal injury attorney on your side, like one of our Scottsdale personal injury plaintiff’s attorneys at Stone Rose Law, is a good idea.
For example, if you are relying on your insurance company to make your personal injury claim on your behalf, remember that the lawyer it chooses will be representing the insurer’s best interests as well as yours. How strongly the insurance company lawyer will represent your interests compared to the insurer may be less certain.
Also, in some cases, more than one other person may have caused your injuries. This can mean more lawyers getting involved, and this can make settlement negotiations and case preparation complicated to handle on your own.
Negotiating ability with attorneys is also important if you pursue your own personal injury claim. Most personal injury claims in Arizona settle out of court and are the product of tough negotiations. If you do not have a good personal injury lawyer on your side, this could cost you actually as well as figuratively.
At Stone Rose Law, we represent our Scottsdale personal injury clients on a contingency basis. We do not bill you for any legal fees or costs unless we either win your case or reach a fair settlement acceptable to you.
The reason why we work for you on contingency is because we have seen too many personal injury cases handled by other law firms in which the victim of the injury gets victimized again––this time by the process of arbitration or litigation. If your attorney is billing you by the hour, then you could soon find yourself in a situation where how to pay your attorney bills is at least as concerning as how you will pay your medical bills.
Often personal injury claims settle before trial for less than what they are worth because the injury victim runs out of money to pay the law firm bills. If the other side knows this, then they will be tempted to drag out negotiations and engage in pretrial tactics to increase your attorney’s hourly rate bill until you reach a financial breaking point.
Because we work on a contingency fee basis, these hardball tactics by opposing attorneys do not work on us. We only receive a percentage of your final settlement or judgment award. We only get paid if you win.
Stone Rose Law is a dedicated personal injury law firm. Our Arizona personal injury lawyers have successfully settled and litigated hundreds of personal injury cases for our clients over the years.
At our Scottsdale, AZ law office we put you first, prioritizing customer service and providing personalized legal strategies. Our law firm has a proven system to make sure you receive the highest quality legal care, starting with your free case evaluation.
We use a comprehensive approach to negotiate the best possible settlement of your claim. Here are some of the items on our checklist when we represent you in a personal injury case:
In addition to preparing your legal claims, we can also help you find top doctors in your region. The experienced personal injury lawyer we assign to you will look out for your physical, emotional, and financial well-being so you can rest and concentrate on healing.
Call us today, at (480) 498-8998, to set up a free consultation with one of our personal injury attorneys.