- This is John Kelly from the Kelly Law Team. I wanna talk to you about a personal injury lawsuit and a step-by-step timeline of what to expect. So in full disclosure, every case is different when it comes to timelines, but all of them have some things in common. I'm gonna go over in general what you might expect if you're in an injury case and the timelines to expect what to happen. We're gonna go down the list here. The first thing is the accident, the actual injury. Within 10 minutes of the accident, you can expect that you're gonna be going through the scenario of calling the police, getting your witnesses there, possibly getting treatment for your injuries, if you're injured badly you may have a hospital called and an ambulance coming out, 911. So that's a scenario, but within the first 10 minutes you wanna if you are able to, make sure you get a report. So if you're on the roads, you wanna call 911. If you can get the police to come out to take a statement. If you're on someone's property, you wanna notify the property owner. If you are in a commercial business, you wanna call for a manager and have them take a report of what happened. So you wanna start getting that documentation within 10 minutes. Within one week of this injury, you want your medical treatment set up. You may have already had that done, hey, if you were transported via ambulance to the hospital, obviously that's all gonna be getting done already, you would have your referrals after the hospital. But if it's a more minor injury and you're feeling pains and angst and you need to get some treatment, don't put it off longer than one week. So within one week, you can expect that you wanna be to your primary care doctor, or another facility that helps with injured patients and starting to get that documentation. The sooner the better on that, because insurance companies, they love to claim that you weren't injured because you waited too long and there's a lot of people that just like to fight through their injuries and say, you know maybe it's gonna get better, but you want that documentation. Within one week too, you can expect that it's a good idea to reach out to a lawyer for at least a free consultation. Most lawyers including myself will talk to you about what you've been through, what to expect with your injuries, what to expect to with the insurance companies and that's the important one. So you wanna reach out to a lawyer, least get a consultation. You may wanna hire 'em later, you may wanna hire him right away. Really doesn't matter, at least get a consultation 'cause it's free and it's gonna give you some good advice, especially given your jurisdiction. And if you're in Arizona, there's different laws then if you're in California. You kinda wanna know. Next and that kind of goes with it, is speaking to the insurance companies. If there's insurance involved with say an auto accident, they may be calling you within one week, so usually one to five days after the accident. They wanna get a statement. They possibly wanna talk to you about your injuries. They may even wanna try to make you an offer. Those are things to expect. Insurance companies will start reaching out to you. If you haven't reported it to them, someone else may have reported. That's why the consultation with an attorney is a good idea. Generally, you don't wanna make a statement about your injuries. You can tell 'em, look I'm injured. I'm looking at possibly retaining someone. Property damage, that's again, within one week to four weeks, right after the accident, you can talk to a property damage adjuster about your vehicle, what's going on with it, where it's at. Get that out of the way. Typically, I have my clients try to get that resolved within the first two weeks of the accident so that they're in a new vehicle if they can drive. They don't have to worry about that. If it's on a premise, property damage doesn't necessarily come into play quite as much, but that's something that can get settled, out of the way before anything else takes place. Now we're a couple of weeks into it, you've already got your treatment set up.
