Compensation for Car Accident Injuries

If you've been injured in an auto accident, you may be entitled to compensation. At The Law Office of Zucker & Bennett, P.C., our auto accident attorneys have handled hundreds of cases involving motor vehicle accidents.

MR. GARY ZUCKER: Here at Zucker & Bennett, we handle many cases involving motor vehicle accidents and over the years, we've handled hundreds of these cases. There are two aspects to a motor vehicle accident case. The first is the medical expenses and lost earnings, which are separate and apart for the claim for pain and suffering. Under New York's No Fault Law, medical expenses and lost earnings must be paid by the insurance company that insures the vehicle which the injured party occupies. If the injured party is a pedestrian struck by a motor vehicle, then the vehicle's insurance company must pay all the medical expenses and lost earnings, and that's regardless of who is at fault for the accident. The second aspect is pain and suffering. In order to recover more then just your medical expenses and your lost earnings, you need to establish that your injury qualifies as a serious injury under the No Fault Insurance Law. Now a serious injury is defined under the No Fault Insurance Law as a broken bone, a significantly disfiguring scar, being unable to attend to your usual occupation or activities for 90 out of the first 180 days following the accident, having a total loss of use of your bodily organ or having a permanent and significant limitation of use of a bodily organ. So you must first establish that the injury falls under one of those categories in order to be permitted to recover for your pain and suffering. In addition, in order to recover for pain and suffering, you must establish that the other party involved in the accident was either partially or totally at fault in causing the accident. We use eye witness testimony or we may use physical testimony or we may use expert testimony--each case is evaluated on an individual basis so that we can determine how best to present our case to the jury in order to establish that it was not our client who caused this accident but rather it was the operator of the other vehicle in this accident who is primarily responsible.