Mitigating Damages in Personal Injury Cases: What Toledo Car Accident Victims Must Do

If you have been injured in a car accident, you are probably fighting for the compensation you deserve. As a victim, you must act reasonably for your well-being, ensuring you don’t cause your injury to get worse. But insurance companies cannot deny your claim just because you did not take some precautions such as wearing a seat belt or not seeking immediate medical attention. 

In many car accident cases, insurance companies end up not paying full compensation to victims because they failed to mitigate their damages. Because of this, you need a car accident lawyer in Toledo who can help you understand his defense’s legal requirements. A great attorney will help you fight back and ensure you get maximum compensation for your injury.  

How to Mitigate Damages

You can mitigate your damages by taking reasonable care to reduce the impacts of your injury and the resulting losses. This can be done by seeking appropriate and prompt medical attention, keeping up with your treatment, and following the orders of your doctor. Also, mitigation efforts can be made before the accident or injury such as focused driving, wearing a seat belt, and defensive driving. 

Although these things are essential, the insurer can’t deny you monetary compensation only because you did not do one of these mitigation efforts. If the insurer rejects your claim for something such as not using a seat belt, it has to prove you sustained an injury because of it. 

The insurer may not pay for treatments required for a nose injury if the accident caused your face to slam into the dashboard since this may not have happened if you wore a seat belt. But back, leg, and neck injuries might have happened whether or not you wore a seat belt.

What steps you can take to mitigate your damages depends on your case’s facts. You must discuss your claim with a lawyer as soon as possible to know how to protect your claim’s value. 

If the insurer can successfully prove that you did not take efforts to mitigate your damages, it will reduce your compensation. In general, courts won’t force liable parties to pay avoidable damages. For instance, if you did not seek prompt medical care and you end up incurring surgery costs, the liable party may not pay for it. Your attorney can help you understand what might affect your claim and how a failure to mitigate can reduce your possible compensation.