It depends on five things: your medical costs, the income you lost, the care you'll need later, what the injury did to your life, and who was at fault. The first offer an insurance company makes usually counts only the first one — and it's made before they know you have a lawyer. We'll tell you what your case may be worth, for free.
1. Medical costs. The ER, the imaging, the physical therapy, the surgery. Not just the bills you've gotten — the ones still coming. This is the part every adjuster counts, because it's the easiest to see.
2. Lost income. The weeks you couldn't work, and — often bigger — the work you can't do the same way anymore. A roughneck who can't lift, a driver who can't sit for ten hours, a nurse who can't do a twelve-hour shift. That loss runs for years.
3. Future care. The hardware that gets replaced. The surgery in five years. The brace, the therapy, the pain management. Adjusters almost never bring this up on their own; a person without a lawyer almost never asks.
4. What it did to your life. Pain. Sleep. The things you did with your kids that you can't now. New Mexico law lets a jury put a number on this, and so a settlement has to, too.
5. Fault — and how much of it. New Mexico compares fault. If some of the crash was on you, your recovery is reduced by your share; it doesn't disappear. Insurance companies use "you were partly at fault" to scare people off. Don't let it.
Because it's made early, before the injuries are fully known, and because it assumes two things: that you don't know what cases like yours have been worth, and that you won't sue. Both change the day you hire a trial firm. It's not personal; it's how the business works. Our job is to make you the client they can't lowball.
Anyone who tells you what your case is worth before your injuries are understood is guessing, and a guess that's too high is as harmful as one that's too low. What we can do, right away and for free, is tell you where you stand: whether you have a case, what kinds of damages it likely includes, what the insurer will try, and whether you even need us. Sometimes you don't, and we'll say so.
Yes — and you still usually net more. Our fee is a percentage of what we recover; if we recover nothing, you owe no fee. We explain it in writing, in your language, before you sign.
When your doctors know. A case shouldn't settle until the injuries are clear. Simple cases resolve in months; serious ones take longer because the number has to be right.
You still have rights. Your right to be paid for an injury generally doesn't depend on your immigration status. Call us in Spanish and ask.
General information about New Mexico law, not legal advice, and not a promise about any case. Every case is different. Waggoner & Saidi is a forthcoming New Mexico personal injury practice.
Free, private, in your language. If you’d do better on your own, we’ll tell you.