Injuries

Automobile Accidents

Car accidents happen everywhere, every day.  If you are involved in one, it can have devastating effects on your life.  You suffer from your injuries.  You suffer from the pain you never had before.  You may miss out on your pay from work.  You are accumulating bills that are not your fault. You need the help of James Law Group to get the financial support to which you are entitled.

The person who is injured or has lost a loved one because of someone’s negligence or carelessness will always be out-maneuvered by the insurance claims adjusters and their lawyers who are advising them behind the scenes. One must remember that to an insurance claims adjuster, even if the insurance company is your own, you are just a number. The adjuster’s job is to save his employer money. The adjuster saves his employer money by paying you as little as possible to settle your claim for your injuries or the death of a loved one.

If we cannot persuade the insurance company to be fair, then our only remedy is to file an action with the court asking that the court or a jury settle our differences for us. What most clients do not realize is that when an action is filed, under Missouri law, we have to bring it against the individual bad driver or other wrongdoer and not his insurance company. The law fears that if members of the jury are told that the defendant, that is the bad driver or other wrongdoers, is covered by insurance that the jury would be unfairly prejudiced in favor of the injured person. So, the fact that his insurance company covers the defendant’s negligent conduct cannot even be mentioned in court. The real fact is, however, that it is extremely unlikely that the case would ever be before a jury if there were not insurance to pay the judgment against the defendant.

Another problem that the client’s case encounters in court is that the jury will often assume, even though there is no evidence to support the assumption, that the injured person had health insurance, and that the health insurance has already paid the person’s medical bills. Often this is not the case, and even for those times when it is the case, the person’s health insurance carrier has notified the defendant’s insurance company that it has a lien against any settlement or judgment in the case for the repayment to it for any bills already paid. The problem is that the jury, not understanding how this works, is tempted not to take the injured person’s medical bills into account when arriving at a figure for the injured person’s harms and losses, thus arriving at a verdict that is manifestly unfair to the injured person and a boon to the defendant’s insurance company.

It takes a skilled and experienced attorney to overcome these obstacles through negotiations and through a jury trial if necessary. The attorneys at James Law Group have been holding insurance companies and corporations accountable for their duties to ordinary citizens for over 30 years. When you or someone you love has been seriously injured or killed by someone’s wrongful conduct, don’t let the corporation or insurance company shirk their responsibility. Such windfalls to corporations and insurance companies frequently result in the injured person, their family, and the American taxpayer shouldering the burden of the corporation or insurance company’s responsibility.

Railroad Crossing Accidents

Railroad crossings are very dangerous and present a high potential for collisions. When collisions between automobiles and trains happen, the resulting injuries are almost always tragic and frequently fatal. Railroad crossing accidents can be caused by various factors, including the conductor’s failure to sound the proper warning whistles or the railroad company failing to properly mark and maintain the crossing or put up gates. If you or family members have been injured or killed due to being struck by a train at a railroad crossing, the experienced personal injury attorneys at James Law Group, LLC can help you.

Many railroad crossings are maintained in an unsafe condition without clear lines of sight, gates, guards, bells, lights, whistle posts, or without providing an adequate warning to cars and pedestrians. Some crossings do not allow for clear visibility of an oncoming train because of overgrown shrubs, trees, or buildings. Other factors causing railroad injuries include excessive train speeds and failure to sound train whistles. Engineers do whatever is necessary to make up lost time. Their speeds have often been recorded in excess of 80 miles an hour when approaching crossings, especially in small-town areas.

Railroad companies are multi-million dollar corporations that will use all their resources to keep you from uncovering and holding them accountable for their irresponsible and sometimes illegal actions. You need an attorney who is accustomed to dealing with such corporations and their tactics. The James Law Group has over thirty years of experience in handling such cases.

Work Accidents

Any on-the-job injury is a serious matter. An injured employee and his or her family may suddenly face a lack of income, uncertainty about the nature of an injury, pain, frustration with available medical treatment, and confusion about the future. At James Law Group, LLC, our attorneys offer experienced workers’ compensation (“work comp”) representation to workers throughout Missouri, in cities including St. Peters, St. Louis, O’Fallon, Troy, Warrenton, Wright City, Bowling Green, Hannibal, Wentzville, Montgomery City, and St. Charles. We can help to lessen the uncertainties you may be experiencing.

Workers’ compensation is a no-fault social insurance program. The injured employee does not need to prove that an on-the-job injury was someone else’s fault in order to receive workers’ compensation benefits. Most employers are required to provide workers’ compensation insurance coverage for each employee.

We are experienced in workers’ compensation law, and we can help you pursue your workers’ compensation claim. Benefits that may be available to you include:

• Medical Care
• Temporary Disability
• Permanent Disability
• Death Benefits
• Money Settlement

Medical Malpractice

Perhaps no kind of case is more discussed or more vilified than medical malpractice claims. It is also the type of case about which there is the most misinformation – like the notion that all medical malpractice cases are “frivolous” lawsuits. The truth is that, according to a study conducted by two doctors and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, approximately 98,000 people die every year in this country due to the carelessness or incompetence of doctors. Further, under Missouri law, a medical malpractice case cannot even be filed unless a medical doctor is willing to swear under oath that the defendant did something improper and that his carelessness caused the injury or death of the patient.

Under the current climate of public perception, however, anyone who has been injured by the misconduct of a doctor starts at a great disadvantage to the defendant doctor and his insurance company. It takes an attorney experienced in dealing with the current public perceptions to overcome any biases a jury may begin with so that they can see what the defendant actually did and hold him accountable for his carelessness or incompetence.

Additionally, medical malpractice cases require a level of familiarity and knowledge regarding the medical terms and conditioned involved in a particular case. An attorney representing a person injured by a doctor’s carelessness or incompetence must not only be able to understand the conditions and treatments himself, but also be able to distill highly technical and complex medical issues down to easily understood kernels of information that jurors who did not go to medical school and may only hear a few days of testimony regarding the issues can understand. If the jury cannot understand the medical issues, they will never be able to understand why the doctor was careless or incompetent.

At James Law Group, we have been helping patients who have been seriously injured by careless doctors for over 30 years. We have the experience and the tools to help a jury understand how the doctor was careless and how his actions injured you.