There is reimbursement of medicals, your billing, your expenses. If you suffer a loss of wages that’s also recoverable and then what everybody knows which is called pain and suffering.
This claim is available to the survivors of the person who was killed, and for their monetary losses that they have and will suffer due to the death of the decedent.
It’s necessary to tell the police your version of what occurred. If you’ve been injured, it’s also necessary to tell them that. With regard to whether or not you should always call the police, if you’re certain no one was injured and it’s a minor little fender bender, then you’re really not required to call the police.
Generally, I tell people that if they need medical care, then go get it. There is usually coverage for that. Once they’ve completed their medical care, we’ll figure out if there is enough to go forward with that case.
In the more serious cases, especially the ones involving children, I certainly talk extensively about the use of diaries. With simpler cases, I really just tell people to keep track of what doctors they have seen, when they saw them, what tests they have had, and things like that.
In New Jersey, most of us work on contingency. That means that we’re paid contingent upon success, meaning that if you don’t get paid, we don’t get paid. The only area that sometimes depends on the attorney you contact is who pays for the expenses of the case.
No fault is kind of confusing. The only thing that no fault means in New Jersey is that, regardless of fault, you go to your own insurance company to have your medical bills paid or, if you don’t have your own policy, you go to a family member with whom you live.
Everything depends upon the specific circumstances of a particular accident. There are a lot of finer points in every specific situation. Once you start down the correct road, you have to work within the procedures that you have to follow under those circumstances.
With regard to going to a physician, they have to talk with physicians and find a physician that might be willing to treat them with the understanding that they would be paid out of settlement in the case.
It is a rather short list. It is PIP from motor vehicle accidents or workers’ comp when one is working when the accident occurs even if you’re driving a vehicle. At that point, it would still be workers’ comp and not PIP. The third source would be health insurance.