Hollister Personal Injury Law Firm Fights for Full Compensation

Reputable injury attorneys serving Watsonville and surrounding areas

For more than 70 years, The Grunsky Law Firm PC has represented clients throughout the Central Coast of California in actions to recover for personal injuries. If you have been harmed due to someone’s negligent act or omission, you have a right to recover monetary compensation for your losses. Most personal injury cases settle without going to trial. However, that doesn’t mean you can easily get a fair settlement from an insurance company. Insurance adjusters and defense attorneys are determined to reduce costs for the insurer by getting injured plaintiffs to settle for much less than their case is worth. If you want to get full and fair compensation, it’s crucial to have an experienced personal injury attorney representing your interests.

Effective legal counsel for a variety of injury scenarios

A serious injury can occur almost anywhere at any time. In our practice, we have represented many victims of motor vehicle accidents on Rt. 1, U.S. 101, Rt. 9, I-280, and many other major arteries and surface streets along the Central Coast. But we also manage personal injury and wrongful death cases resulting from other injury scenarios, such as:

• Boat accidents
• Defective products
• Dog bites
• Nursing home abuse and neglect
• Premises liability
• Workplace and construction site accidents

Whatever the source of your injury, our legal team performs a thorough evaluation of your injury event to determine liability and hold the defendants thoroughly accountable.

What damages are available in a personal injury lawsuit?

When someone who has a duty to act with care injures you carelessly, recklessly or deliberately, you have the right to monetary compensation for your losses. The law calls these losses “damages” and divides them into two categories: economic and noneconomic. Economic damages represent your financial losses due to the injury and include:

• Medical bills, past and future
• Costs of rehabilitation
• Cost to modify a home to accommodate a disability
• Lost income, past and future

Most of these damages are easily calculated based on charges you incurred. However, your future losses, if you need ongoing medical care or are unable to work as you once did, are somewhat speculative. Our firm consults financial experts who can accurately forecast your losses based on various economic projections. Your noneconomic damages represent real but intangible losses that are hard to express in dollars and cents, such as:

• Pain and suffering
• Loss of quality of life
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Loss of consortium

It is very hard for an injured party to know how much to request in noneconomic damages. That’s one reason it’s important to rely on your personal injury attorney’s knowledge and experience. Even so, it’s impossible to predict how a jury will respond to your claim, which is why so many cases settle before they go to trial.

Statute of limitations for personal injury in California

The statute of limitations allows an injured party to bring a lawsuit for damages within two years from the date of an injury event. After that, the injured party loses his rights forever. However, there are certain exceptions that can extend the statute of limitations, including:

• Discovery rule — In cases of a latent injury, the plaintiff has one year from the time the injury is discovered or reasonably should have been discovered. This could extend the statute of limitations by anywhere from one day to one year.
• Unavailable defendant — If the defendant leaves the state, is sent to prison, or becomes insane, the statutory period is tolled until the defendant returns to the state, is released from prison, or recovers mental capacity.
• Defendant’s bankruptcy — Since you cannot attempt to collect a debt during a bankruptcy, you must wait to file your lawsuit until after the bankruptcy is resolved. The statutory period stops running during the bankruptcy and starts again when the bankruptcy process is over.
• Injury to a child — A child under the age of 18 does not have the capacity to sue; therefore, the statutory period begins on the child’s 18th birthday.

If you have an obvious injury, the statute of limitations should never become an issue. You should retain an attorney as quickly as possible to preserve the evidence you need to be successful in your case.

Contact an effective personal injury attorney in Hollister and Watsonville, California

The Grunsky Law Firm PC provides effective, timely and innovative legal representation for injured parties throughout the Central Coast of California. If you have sustained a serious injury, call us at 831-740-8881 or contact our office online to schedule a consultation. Our firm accepts injury cases on a contingency fee basis, so you pay no attorney fees until you recover compensation.