3 Things You Can Do To Prevent From Being Sued In An Accident
If you have had some sort of accident happen on your property you are probably worried about a lawsuit. Lawsuits happen all the time, so it is not that unlikely that someone will come after you for help paying for all of their damages. This is why it is so important to be prepared for a lawsuit. Here are some things you can do to protect yourself.
1. Talk To A Lawyer First Thing
One mistake that people make is thinking that they don't need to talk to a lawyer so they wait until the problem has become severe to actually get legal advice. You can save yourself a great deal of money and time by talking to an attorney early on about what your options are. They can advise you on what you should and shouldn't do to protect yourself. It is so much better to prevent a major problem by spending a small amount of money for a meeting with a lawyer, then to wait till you've got a full blown lawsuit on your hand and you are on the hook for thousands of dollars.
2. Try To Go Through Insurance
Many times no one will file a lawsuit if they can get the amount of money they need to help pay for their damages. This is why you should first contact your insurance provider about covering the expenses. If the accident happened on your property, or with your property like you were driving a car, you should contact your homeowners insurance, or auto insurance about paying for the damages. Most policies have liability coverage that will help to pay for any accident you caused. If you can quickly fix the problem you will avoid a lawsuit, which is ideal, since in a lawsuit you not only have to pay the damages, but you have to pay the legal fees as well.
3. Reach Out For Good Measure
If you reach out to the person and offer to pay their medical bills for example, you can stop any suit from happening. In addition, if you and the party can agree on a number for the damages and you pay it out, make sure you have them sign something that says that this was a payment for the accident, and that this is final. This will help if they try to come back at you for more, because you had already settled it on your own.
Contact an attorney, like True Guarnieri Ayer LLP, for more information.