This stretch of OBX barrier islands, known for its scenic beauty and tourist appeal, also brings distinct challenges regarding accident claims.

The coastal environment of the Outer Banks, coupled with fluctuating seasonal traffic, contributes to a variety of accident scenarios.

Understanding the nuances of accident claims and dealing with insurance adjusters can be crucial for anyone hurt due to the negligence of other drivers.

On the Outer Banks, where roads are frequently bordered by waterways and soft shoulders, car accidents can result in serious, life-altering injuries.

Similarly, trucking accidents, often involving larger vehicles traversing the narrow OBX roads, bring their own set of complexities. Motorcyclists, drawn by the allure of open coastal roads, also face unique risks.

Each type of accident carries its own legal and procedural subtleties – Danny Glover, OBX Accident Lawyer

Factors such as the nature of the accident, the laws governing vehicle operation in North Carolina, and the impact of coastal weather conditions can all shape the claim process.

Moreover, the emotional and physical toll on your physical and mental well-being cannot be understated after a serious wreck.

For OBX locals and visitors alike, understanding the legal landscape is vital in the event of an accident.

Motorcycle Accident FAQs

This includes knowing your rights, the potential implications of North Carolina’s insurance and personal injury laws, including Contributory Negligence and the Statute of Limitations, and the steps to take immediately following an accident.

While the path to resolution can be intricate, being informed about these processes can help you navigate the complexities confidently.

Our aim is to offer a guiding light through the sometimes murky waters of accident claims in the Outer Banks.

By clearing up common misconceptions and offering insights into some of the specifics of accident claims on the OBX, we hope to provide a resource that empowers you to navigate these challenging situations with better a understanding and preparedness.

Misconception #1: You Can Easily Handle an Insurance Claim without a lawyer

Some people try to manage their accident and insurance claims themselves. While it’s possible, doing so without legal guidance often overlooks the intricate nature of the NC personal injury laws, potentially leading to less favorable outcomes.

At first glance, the process of filing an insurance claim may seem straightforward, but the reality is often far more complex.

Navigating the intricacies of legal procedures, insurance negotiations, and, at times, courtroom protocols, can be overwhelming for someone without a legal background.

For instance, understanding the specifics of North Carolina’s contributory negligence law, which can significantly impact the outcome of a claim, is crucial.

The “contrib” law in NC sets forth that if a person is found even slightly responsible for the accident, they may be barred from receiving any compensation.

The legal pitfalls of Contributory Negligence in North Carolina are not always apparent to the untrained eye and can drastically alter the course of a claim – Danny Glover, Accident Lawyer Outer Banks

Dealing with insurance companies and their adjusters is often a challenging, if not frustrating, aspect of the claims process.

The big insurance companies have their own teams of professionals who are very good at minimizing payouts and denying claims.

They often employ tactics that can be difficult to counter without a thorough understanding of the law and experience in negotiation.

For example, they might offer a quick settlement that seems attractive but fails to fully cover an accident’s long-term costs and impact.

In the unique setting of the Outer Banks, where the nature of the accident could be influenced by coastal conditions, having a full understanding of these factors can prove essential.

It’s easy to overlook the key elements of a claim, leading to a possibly inadequate and/or unfair settlement.

The emotional and physical stress following an accident can impair your ability to make sound, objective decisions.

This stress, coupled with the time-consuming nature of managing a claim, can take a toll on your daily life.

It’s also important to consider the procedural deadlines and documentation required in accident cases and any related insurance claims.

Missing a deadline or failing to properly document injuries and damages can weaken your insurance claim significantly.

While self-representation is a legal right, it’s a good idea to be fully aware of the complexities involved in accident claims after a car accident, motorcycle wreck, or trucking accident on the Outer Banks.

That can be a key aspect of helping ensure that someone hurt due to the negligence of another is fully and fairly compensated.

Misconception #2: Filing a Claim Always Leads to a Lawsuit and Litigation in Court

A prevalent misconception about filing accident claims, particularly in the realm of car, truck, and motorcycle accidents, is the belief that pursuing a claim inevitably leads to a court battle.

This notion, while understandable, does not accurately reflect the reality of most personal injury cases, especially in the context of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

In reality, the majority of accident claims are resolved without ever setting foot in a courtroom.

The process of resolving a claim typically starts with negotiation, a phase where the parties attempt to reach an agreement on the compensation amount.

This negotiation is often conducted between the claimant’s (plaintiff’s) legal representative (the person hurt in the accident) and the insurance company, through their claims adjuster or the insurance company’s defense attorney.

A substantial number of claims negotiations result in an agreeable settlement to both parties, thus eliminating the need for a trial.

Settlements are generally preferred because they can provide a quicker resolution to the claim, allowing those involved to move forward without the prolonged duration and uncertainty of a trial.

However, it’s important to recognize that negotiation requires a careful balancing act.

Insurance companies, while open to settlements, often initially offer compensation that is well below what the claim might be worth.

Accident lawyers may refer to that as a “lowball offer.”

The negotiation process involves back-and-forth communication, where each side presents their arguments and evidence, trying to reach a compromise.

This phase can be intricate and deserves an in-depth understanding of the claim’s value, an area that those unfamiliar with the NC insurance laws and claims process might find challenging.

When negotiations do not yield a satisfactory outcome, the option to go to trial remains.

Your accident attorney should have substantial courtrom experience. If we say ‘we’ll see you in court,’ we mean it – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

Yet, this is often a path taken when all other avenues have been exhausted.

Trials are generally more time-consuming, expensive, and unpredictable.

The decision to proceed to court should be made only after careful consideration of all factors involved, including the strength of the evidence, the specifics of the case, and the potential risks and benefits.

It’s also worth noting that in the unique environment of the Outer Banks, factors such as the availability of the plaintiff or the negligent driver to travel back to the OBX for a trial, can impact the dynamics of a claim.

Many different factors can influence the decision-making process of the person wrongfully injured due to someone else’s negligence, the person responsible for the wreck, and their insurance company, affecting whether a case goes to trial.

While the prospect of a court trial is a possibility in accident claims, it is more of an exception than a norm.

We believe the key is to approach the insurance claim process with a clear understanding of your legal rights and options and the various pathways to resolution.

Being well-informed about these processes enables you to navigate the claim with more confidence and less apprehension about the potential of a court trial.

Misconception #3: Insurance Adjusters are Looking Out for You

Another common misconception in the realm of personal injury claims in North Carolina is the belief that insurance companies will offer full and fair compensation if you’ve been wrongfully injured due to the negligence of their “insured.”

This assumption can lead to the injured party accepting an initial offer without fully understanding their rights or the true value of their claims.

However, it’s crucial to recognize that insurance companies, like any business, aim to minimize their financial outlay.

The first offer made by an insurance company is often a calculated move to close the case quickly and cost-effectively.

These initial proposals may appear attractive, especially to individuals facing mounting medical bills and financial pressures due to their inability to work.

However, “hurry up” offers rarely reflect the full extent of the claimant’s losses and future needs.

Insurance adjusters are skilled negotiators trained to protect the company’s interests.

They may employ various tactics, such as questioning the severity of injuries or suggesting that the claimant was at fault, alleging contributory negligence, even when the facts do not bear such an allegation.

Such strategies are designed to reduce the perceived value of the claim and justify lower settlement offers.

Furthermore, the intricacies of insurance policies and the legal language used in the NC accident laws can be difficult for laypersons to navigate.

Important details regarding coverage limits, exclusions, and clauses related to specific types of injuries or accidents can significantly impact the compensation received.

Without a thorough understanding of these details, claimants might overlook aspects of their claim that could increase their compensation.

Additionally, insurance companies often delay the processing of claims, hoping that the financial strain will compel claimants to settle for less.

This delay tactic can be particularly challenging for those who need immediate financial support to cover medical expenses and lost wages.

Another important aspect to consider is the calculation of non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering or emotional distress.

These damages are subjective and not easily quantifiable, making them challenging to negotiate without a substantial understanding of how they are typically evaluated in personal injury cases.

It’s also worth noting that the specifics of a case, including the nature and extent of injuries, the impact on the claimant’s quality of life, and the circumstances of the accident, play a crucial role in determining the value of a claim.

These factors should be carefully assessed to ensure that the compensation sought truly reflects the claimant’s losses and future needs.

In light of these complexities, it’s evident that relying solely on the insurance company’s assessment of what constitutes fair compensation can lead to inadequate settlements.

Claimants should approach these negotiations with caution and, where possible, seek legal help and guidance to better understand the true value of their claim and their rights.

This approach can significantly influence the outcome of the negotiation process, leading to a more equitable resolution and full and fair settlement.

Misconception #4: There is plenty of time to file an Insurance Claim

A critical misunderstanding that often surfaces in personal injury claims is the belief that there is ample time to file a claim.

Many individuals assume that the process can be initiated at their convenience, underestimating the importance of the legal time constraints known as statutes of limitations.

In reality, these statutes can play a pivotal role in the claims process, setting strict deadlines for filing a lawsuit.

How long do you have to file a claim?

The statute of limitations varies by state and type of claim, and it is essential to be aware of these time frames.

In North Carolina, for instance, the statute of limitations for personal injury claims is generally three years from the date of the accident.

NOTE: FILING A CLAIM WITH THE INSURANCE COMPANY IS NOT THE SAME THING AS FILING A LAWSUIT. FILING AN INSURANCE CLAIM DOES NOT TOLL OR STOP THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS.

This time limit is legally binding, and, with few exceptions, lawsuits filed after this period are likely to be dismissed, regardless of their merit. The statute of limitations for Wrongful Death claims in North Carolina is even shorter.

The rationale behind these statutes is twofold: to ensure that claims are made while evidence is still fresh and to provide a degree of certainty for potential defendants.

As time passes, memories fade, witnesses become unavailable, and evidence can be lost, making it difficult to build a strong case.

For the defendant, these statutes prevent the indefinite threat of legal action.

The process of preparing a claim should not be rushed – Danny Glover Jr., NC Accident Attorney

It often involves gathering detailed evidence, obtaining medical records, consulting with experts, and fully understanding the extent of the injuries and their long-term implications.

This preparation is critical to accurately assess the claim’s value and to ensure that all relevant aspects are considered.

Moreover, waiting until the last minute to file a claim can be risky.

Unforeseen delays, such as difficulty in obtaining the necessary documentation or challenges in determining the appropriate party to sue, can result in missing the deadline.

Additionally, insurance companies may be less inclined to settle claims amicably if they know the statute of limitations is about to expire, as this reduces the claimant’s leverage.

Another important aspect to consider is the time needed for negotiations with insurance companies.

These discussions can be lengthy, and if they do not result in a satisfactory settlement, there must be enough time left to file a lawsuit before the statute of limitations expires.

It’s also worth noting that certain types of claims may have different statutes of limitations.

For example, claims against government entities often have additional procedural requirements.

Ignorance of these nuances can inadvertently lead to the forfeiture of one’s right to seek compensation.

Understanding and adhering to the statute of limitations is a crucial element of the claims process.

While it may seem that there is plenty of time to file a claim, starting the process promptly is essential.

This not only ensures adherence to legal deadlines but also allows for thorough preparation of the claim, enhancing the likelihood of a fair resolution.

Why you should call Danny Glover if you’ve been injured in an accident on the Outer Banks of North Carolina

Navigating the complexities of personal injury claims requires a careful and informed approach, especially when dealing with the unique challenges presented by accidents on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

As we have discussed, common misconceptions about these claims can lead to misunderstandings and potentially adverse outcomes for those who have suffered injuries.

Whether it’s underestimating the nuances of dealing with insurance companies, overlooking the strict timelines set by statutes of limitations, or misjudging the value of professional legal guidance, each misconception carries its own set of risks.

Understanding these complexities is vital, particularly when injuries result from the negligence of others.

Each case brings its own unique circumstances and deserves individual attention and consideration.

The process of claiming compensation for personal injuries is not only about the legal proceedings but also about ensuring that your rights and well-being are adequately protected and advocated for.

For those who find themselves a victim of drunk driving or a grossly negligent drivers, seeking an experienced OBX lawyer can make a significant difference.

If you’ve been injured due to no fault of your own, call Danny Glover at the Danny Glover Law Firm.

With a focus on addressing the individual needs of each case and providing informed legal counsel, the firm is equipped to help navigate the often turbulent waters of Outer Banks personal injury claims.

Remember, while the journey towards seeking justice and compensation can be intricate, you do not have to face it alone.

Guidance from a legal professional can provide clarity, support, and direction, helping to illuminate the path toward a fair resolution.

If you find yourself in need of such assistance, do not hesitate to reach out to Danny Glover at the Danny Glover Law Firm, where your case can receive the attention and dedication it deserves.

Helpful Information about OBX Accidents and Insurance Claims

• The link between Hit and Run accidents and Drunk Driving
• What you need to know about Contributory Negligence in North Carolina
• Accidents in Nags Head: Understanding the complexity of Insurance Claims
• Who is responsible for a Motorcycle Accident?
• Contributory Negligence in NC: Who has the Burden of Proof?
• If you’ve been injured in a motorcycle accident, you need to know these things before filing a claim
• How much is your car accident claim worth?
• Have you been wrongfully hurt because of a DRUNK DRIVER?

That’s especially true for actions involving substantial injuries and wrongful death claims.

While it’s a somewhat common assumption that hit-and-run drivers act out of a momentary panic, substantial evidence suggests the contrary.

In fact, the truth is substantially more disturbing.

A shocking percentage of hit-and-run drivers are intoxicated and/or impaired by alcohol and drugs, and make the conscious decision to flee.

The literature indicates that this is not due to an uncharacteristic psychological or mental break, but rather from a self-centered mindset and the purposeful disregard for others.

That is one reason why Punitive Damages should be an integral aspect of such claims against the at-fault driver.

The incidence of hit-and-run wrecks is shockingly common. The purpose of punitive damages is clear. North Carolina punishes drivers who fail to stop and render aid – Danny Glover, OBX Accident Lawyer

This grim scenario paints a picture of not just recklessness, but a profound disconnect from the basic tenets of empathy and responsibility.

Victims left in the aftermath are too often the forgotten faces in these tragedies, their plight overshadowed by the callousness of those who, instead of helping, choose to escape the scene for entirely selfish reasons.

Understanding the Demographics of Hit-and-Run Offenders

From the perspective of attorneys who help clients injured in drunk driving accidents, understanding the demographics of hit-and-run offenders can be pivotal in holding the legally liable driver responsible and obtaining a full and fair settlement.

Statistical analysis indicates that a significant proportion of hit and run offenders are young males, often under the influence of alcohol or substances, which impairs their judgment and decision-making.

This demographic is well known to be categorically more prone to risky behaviors, including drunk driving, reckless driving, speeding, and fleeing the scene of an accident.

Their actions reflect a deeper societal issue, where certain groups are more likely to engage in behavior that disregards the safety and well-being of others.

Additionally, economic and social factors can influence the likelihood of fleeing an accident scene, with some individuals fearing the financial and legal repercussions more acutely.

This demographic insight is crucial for a plaintiff’s attorney in understanding the patterns of behavior that lead to such tragic incidents, aiding in developing strategies for justice and compensation for the victims.

Foundation for Traffic Safety: Research Brief

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or “NHTSA” datum from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARs) indicates the number of hit and run fatalities has increased on annual basis since 2009, at a rate of 7.2 % per year.

The demographics of hit-and-run drivers are predominantly young males, often influenced by factors like alcohol or drug use.

This demographic is statistically more prone to engaging in risky behaviors, including reckless driving and fleeing after an accident.

Substance abuse significantly impairs their judgment, leading to poor decision-making in high-stress situations such as a collision.

These drivers often exhibit a lack of moral responsibility and a cavalier attitude toward the gravity of their actions, influenced by their impaired state.

Economic and societal pressures may play a critical role in the decision to flee.

The psychology behind hit-and-run incidents is complex, encompassing a myriad of factors that go beyond mere panic or fear.

It often involves a calculated decision to avoid facing the consequences, reflecting a deeper issue of moral and ethical disengagement – Danny Glover, Wrongful Death Accident Lawyer

Understanding these demographic and psychological factors can be essential for legal professionals and jurors deciding issues of culpability, restitution, and the extent of punitive damages to impose (as may be deemed appropriate).

Recognizing the multi-faceted nature of hit-and-run incidents is key to addressing the issue effectively and ensuring justice for victims.

Alcohol and Impaired Judgment: How Substance Abuse Influences Decision-Making

The influence of alcohol and substance abuse on decision-making, particularly in the context of driving, is a critical factor in understanding hit-and-run accidents.

Alcohol significantly impairs cognitive abilities and judgment, leading to a higher likelihood of risk-taking behaviors.

Impairment affects a driver’s ability to assess risks accurately and make sound decisions.

In the context of a hit-and-run wreck, impaired judgment can result in panic and poor decision-making, such as choosing to flee to elude criminal prosecution and civil liability.

Substance abuse can also lead to a distorted sense of invincibility, where drivers overestimate their driving abilities and underestimate the potential consequences of their actions.

False confidence is a dangerous catalyst for reckless behavior.

Furthermore, the altered state of mind under the influence of substances can lead to a lack of empathy and moral reasoning, diminishing the sense of responsibility towards others.

In hit-and-run scenarios, this can manifest as a callous disregard for the victim’s rights and safety.

Punitive Damages in North Carolina

Punitive damages are not primarily aimed at compensating the victim, but rather serve as a punishment to the offender and a deterrent to prevent similar conduct in the future.

Historically, punitive damages have been a tool in the legal system to address actions that are especially harmful or egregious, with a focus on reprimanding behavior that is reckless, intentional, or displays a gross disregard for the general public.

In the context of personal injury cases, especially those involving drunk driving or hit-and-run, punitive damages become pertinent when the defendant’s conduct goes beyond mere negligence.

Drunk driving, by its very nature, involves a conscious disregard for public safety, making it a prime candidate for punitive damages.

Punitive damages are a significant aspect of civil law, particularly relevant in personal injury cases involving drunk driving or hit-and-run incidents – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

Similarly, hit-and-run incidents, where a driver knowingly flees the scene of an accident, especially one involving injury or death, display a level of irresponsibility and callousness that often warrants punitive action.

In determining punitive damages, a jury may consider various factors to ensure the amount is appropriate.

These include things like the nature and egregiousness of the defendant’s conduct, the harm suffered by the plaintiff, and the defendant’s financial status.

Punitive damages should be significant enough to punish the defendant and deter similar behavior in the future.

The jury assesses whether the defendant acted with malice, deceptive intent, criminality, and/or gross negligence.

The potential impact of the punitive damages on the defendant’s financial situation may also be considered.

The legal basis for awarding punitive damages in these scenarios is grounded in the principle of not only providing justice to the victim but also sending a clear message to society about the unacceptable nature of such actions.

Punitive Damages serve as a moral compass of sorts, guiding societal behavior and upholding a standard of conduct.

It reflects the legal system’s recognition of the need for a mechanism to address conduct that is so detrimental to individuals and society that it requires more than just compensatory measures.

Wrongful Death Claims in North Carolina

In North Carolina, wrongful death claims may be pursued when a loved one’s death results from another’s negligence, gross negligence, and/or wrongful criminal acts.

Such legal causes of action allow families to seek justice for a loss that could have been prevented.

Wrongful death encompasses a range of causes of action, from ordinary negligence accidents involving cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc., as well as drunk driving or hit-and-run wrecks.

North Carolina General Statute 28A-18-2 specifically addresses wrongful death, recognizing the unique nature of these claims.

The Wrongful Death Law in North Carolina is intended to hold responsible parties accountable for their actions and provide a measure of closure to grieving families.

It allows for the recovery of damages, including medical and funeral expenses, lost income, and compensation for the emotional pain suffered by the deceased and their family.

Significantly, the statute of limitations for filing a wrongful death claim is two years from the date of the deceased’s passing, a timeframe distinct from ordinary negligence claims.

It’s crucial to understand that filing a claim with an insurance company does not extend this two-year period.

For families grappling with the loss, navigating a wrongful death claim can be an overwhelming process.

The role of a personal injury lawyer in these cases is not only to provide sound legal advice but also to offer compassionate guidance.

We help families understand their rights and the complexities of the law, ensuring the case is handled with the sensitivity and respect it deserves – Danny Glover, Outer Banks Accident Lawyer

In these trying times, a knowledgeable lawyer can be a pillar of support, helping to shoulder the legal burden while families focus on healing.

This legal process, while challenging, stands as a testament to the value of the lost life and the pursuit of justice.

It underscores the legal system’s recognition of the profound impact of wrongful death and its commitment to providing a path to compensation and closure for the bereaved.

It wasn’t an accident

In personal injury law, acknowledging vehicle collisions are results of negligence rather than “accidents” can be an important distinction.

This terminology shift emphasizes that wrecks often stem from choices, not chance.

When we say “accident,” it implies an unavoidable mishap, absolving the responsible party of fault.

However, many vehicle incidents are the consequences of specific decisions, like exceeding speed limits or driving while distracted.

These are not accidents; they are negligent acts.

Take, for instance, drunk driving. No one “accidentally” consumes alcohol and gets behind the wheel.

Drunk driving is a conscious decision with potentially grave consequences – Danny Glover, Outer Banks Lawyer

Labeling negligence as accidental downplays the severity of the at-fault driver’s decisions and its substantial, and sometimes life-altering, impact on victims.

As plaintiff attorneys, our role is to shift this narrative, bringing attention to the truth that most wrecks are avoidable and the result of negligence.

This perspective is not just about legal semantics; it’s about advocating for the victims and ensuring that the responsible parties are held accountable.

It recognizes the suffering of those impacted and validates their experience as a result of someone else’s careless decision.

By confronting the euphemism of “accident” and calling wrecks what they are – the results of negligence – we honor the truth and advocate for justice and safer practices.

Helpful Information about OBX Injury Law

• How long do you have to file an INSURANCE CLAIM?
• The North Carolina Statute of Limitations Law
• How much is your accident claim worth?
• What you need to know about Truck Accidents
• When should you hire an accident lawyer?
• Drunk Driving Accidents: Gross Negligence Defined
• Nags Head Accidents
• Motorcycle Accidents are Different: Here’s Why
• Wrongful Death Claims: What You Need to Know
• How much is a Full and Fair Settlement in a 18-Wheeler Wreck?
• Catastrophic Injuries & Losses: Calculating Damages after an Accident
• OBX Bicycle Accident Lawyer
• What is Contributory Negligence?
• Motorcycle Accidents: Who is Liable?
• Understanding the value of your Personal Injury Claim
• Danny Glover: Your Guide in Wrongful Death cases in North Carolina
• Have you been injured by a Drunk Driver on the Outer Banks?
• Why you should hire a lawyer
• Who has the burden of proof of contributory negligence?

We believe that no one should have to bear the burden of someone else’s reckless decisions. That’s why we are here – to help you navigate the turbulent waters of insurance claims and the legal system.

With a comprehensive understanding of the NC DWI accident laws and a deep compassion for our community, our firm enjoys helping victims of drunk driving accidents.

We don’t just offer legal services; we provide a beacon of hope and a path towards justice and recovery.

Our mission is simple yet powerful: to help you reclaim the life you deserve.

Drunk driving is completely avoidable. We believe holding negligent and grossly negligent drivers responsible is an important and necessary aspect of justice.

If you or a loved one have been impacted by a drunk driving accident in the Outer Banks, it would be an honor to be your guide and your advocate.

Together, we’ll seek the compensation you rightfully deserve and hold those responsible accountable. Because at the Glover Law Firm, your justice is our priority.

What is the Impact of Drunk Driving Accidents?

Drunk driving accidents are not mere statistics; they represent a tragic and preventable reality that shatters lives and communities.

The reckless decision to drive under the influence can turn a routine journey into a nightmare, often resulting in catastrophic injuries or even death.

Families are left to grapple with an irreplaceable loss, a void that can never be filled, as they mourn loved ones taken too soon.

Survivors, meanwhile, may face a lifelong journey of physical and emotional recovery, dealing with debilitating injuries that can alter their quality of life forever.

The impact of these accidents extends beyond the immediate victims – Danny Glover, OBX Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer

First responders, tasked with witnessing the aftermath of such incidents, often carry the psychological burden, a silent toll that goes unnoticed.

The financial strain on the healthcare system is immense, as it strives to provide care for those injured in these preventable tragedies.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), about 1/3 of crash fatalities (car crashes) involve drunk driving. The yearly cost of crashes related to alcohol and driving after consuming alcoholic beverages is estimated at more than forty-four billion dollars.

Drunk driving accidents also ripple through communities, igniting a collective sense of vulnerability and loss, and challenging our sense of safety on the roads we travel daily.

These accidents are a stark reminder of the responsibility that comes with the privilege of driving.

Each drunk driving accident is a wake-up call, a sobering reminder of the fragility of life and the catastrophic consequences of a single poor decision behind the wheel.

What damages may be available?

In cases where plaintiffs have been negligently injured by drunk drivers, various types of compensatory damages may be available, each tailored to the specific circumstances and impacts of the accident.

Compensatory damages are designed to make the injured party “whole” again, to the extent possible, through financial compensation.

Medical expenses are a primary form of compensatory damage.

These can include costs for emergency treatment, hospital stays, surgeries, medications, physical therapy, and any ongoing medical care required as a result of the injuries sustained.

In addition to past medical expenses, if the injuries have long-term effects, plaintiffs may be entitled to compensation for future medical care and associated costs.

Lost wages are another significant category of compensatory damages.

This compensation covers the income that the injured party has lost due to their inability to work following the accident. If the injuries result in a diminished capacity to earn in the future, compensation for loss of future earnings may also be considered.

Pain and suffering is a more subjective, but vital category of compensatory damages.

This takes into account the physical pain and emotional distress suffered by the plaintiff due to the accident and its aftermath. It acknowledges that not all damages are financial and that physical and emotional trauma has a significant impact on quality of life.

Loss of consortium or companionship damages may apply, particularly in cases where the injured party’s relationships with their spouse, partner, or family members are adversely affected due to the injuries sustained.

Property damage compensation covers the cost of repairing or replacing any property damaged in the accident, such as a vehicle.

In some cases, plaintiffs may be eligible for compensation for disfigurement or permanent disability if the injuries from the accident result in long-term physical changes or disabilities.

Costs associated with lifestyle modifications, such as home renovations to accommodate disabilities, can also be included in compensatory damages.

Finally, in cases of wrongful death caused by drunk driving, the deceased’s family may seek damages for funeral and burial expenses, loss of the deceased’s expected income, loss of inheritance, and loss of care, guidance, and nurturing that the deceased would have provided.

It’s important to note that the availability and extent of these damages vary based on the specifics of each case, the jurisdiction, and applicable laws.

Your legal matter deserves the attention of an experienced OBX accident lawyer. It can be an important aspect of understanding and pursuing damages in any given case.

Do you need a lawyer for an Insurance Claim involving Drunk Driving?

Retaining a personal injury lawyer in the case of a drunk driving accident can be a crucial step in navigating the complexities of the legal system and helping ensure your legal rights are protected.

Drunk driving accident lawyers bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in dealing with similar cases, which can be valuable in understanding the nuances of the law and the intricacies of the legal process.

Personal injury lawyers handle negotiations with insurance companies, who regularly aim to settle claims quickly and for less than what might be fair or necessary to cover the full extent of damages.

Personal injury lawyers spend time compiling and presenting evidence that helps establish the liability of the drunk driver.

That process involves not just collecting police reports and witness statements but sometimes involves working with accident reconstruction experts and medical professionals to build a comprehensive case.

An important aspect of legal representation for personal injury claims involves valuing claims, taking into account not just the immediate medical expenses and lost wages, but also the long-term financial and emotional impact of the injuries – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

A significant aspect of a lawyer’s role is advocating for our client’s best interests.

Zealous advocacy is particularly important when dealing with catastrophic injuries that may require long-term care or result in permanent disability.

A personal injury lawyer can be a vital intermediary, speaking and negotiating on behalf of the victim, allowing you to focus on your recovery.

Moreover, we take the time to explain the statute of limitations and other legal deadlines. It’s important for insurance claims to be filed in a timely manner.

Danny Glover is an experienced courtroom advocate. He brings experience in litigation and is prepared to take a case to trial if an appropriate settlement cannot be reached.

In cases of wrongful death resulting from a drunk driving accident, personal injury lawyers guide the victim’s family through the legal process of seeking justice and full and fair compensation.

While no amount of money can replace a loved one, obtaining financial compensation can provide some measure of relief for the bereaved family.

A personal injury lawyer serves as a guide and advocate in legal matters, helping victims of drunk driving accidents navigate the legal landscape, which can be daunting and complex, especially in the aftermath of a traumatic event.

That allows victims to focus on healing and recovery, knowing that your legal rights and interests are being actively protected and pursued.

Helpful Information About Accident Claims

What is Contributory Negligence?

Nags Head Accident Insurance Claims

Are Motorcycle Accidents Different?

What you need to know about Wrongful Death Claims

NC Statute of Limitations Law

How long do you have to file a claim?

Catastrophic Accidents and Injuries in North Carolina

Full and Fair Damages: Trucking Accidents

OBX Bicycle Accidents: Experienced Legal Advice Helps

Distinctively, while most states in the US employ the Comparative Negligence approach, North Carolina remains steadfast in its application of the defense Contributory Negligence.

This can play a crucial role in determining the fate of a personal injury claim, including those stemming from car accidents, motorcycle accidents, and trucking accidents.

To appreciate the intricate nature of Contrib, it’s vital to understand its implications on personal injury claims in the state of North Carolina.

Quick Facts | North Carolina Contributory Negligence

• Pure Contributory Negligence | North Carolina is one of a handful of jurisdictions where a plaintiff’s own negligence can act as a complete bar to recovery in a personal injury claim.
• The Bar to Recovery | If a defendant proves that the plaintiff’s negligence was a proximate cause of the accident, the plaintiff may be unable to recover any damages.
• All or Nothing System | Unlike “comparative negligence” states, where damages are reduced by a percentage of fault, North Carolina’s system can result in zero recovery for a negligent plaintiff.
• The Last Clear Chance Doctrine | Even if a plaintiff was negligent, they may recover damages if the defendant had the “last clear chance” to avoid the accident but failed to do so.
• Burden of Proof | Per N.C.G.S. § 1-139, the party asserting the defense of contributory negligence carries the burden of proving that defense to the court.
• Legal Evaluation | Because insurance adjusters use “contrib” as a reason to deny claims, a thorough investigation of the fact pattern is necessary to protect a victim’s rights.

The Essence of Contributory Negligence

The concept of Contributory Negligence often catches victims hurt in accidents off-guard due to its distinctive stance compared to other states.

In North Carolina, the doctrine of Contributory Negligence places undue weight on victims, frequently favoring large insurance firms over victims hurt due to the substantial negligence of others – Danny Glover, OBX Accident Lawyer

In essence, this legal principle asserts that if an injured victim, typically referred to as the plaintiff, bears minor responsibility, even as little as 1%, they may be barred from obtaining any compensation.

In contrast, many states employ the more balanced (and fair) Comparative Negligence rule, which adjusts compensation based on the fault percentage of each party involved.

Who has the Burden of Proof on Contrib?

The application of Contributory Negligence in North Carolina underscores the necessity for a thorough case evaluation and proactively addressing potential allegations of contributory negligence, especially from insurance adjusters.

Remember, insurance adjusters are not on your side. Their loyalty lies with their employers, and they won’t hesitate to use the Contributory Negligence defense to their advantage if it means reducing their payout – Danny Glover, OBX Injury Attorney

Ripples of the Doctrine of Contributory Negligence

On the face of it, Contributory Negligence may seem straightforward, but its implications are far-reaching and can pose significant challenges to personal injury victims.

This doctrine doesn’t just complicate legal proceedings, it weaves intricacies into the very fabric of post-accident experiences.

Imagine driving safely through an intersection when another driver, in blatant disregard for the law, speeds through a stop sign, crashing into you causing a “T-Bone” collision.

The shock, the trauma, and the immediate concern for safety are soon followed by the realization of potential legal battles ahead.

Although the person who caused the wreck is clearly at fault, a single piece of evidence suggesting you may have been even slightly over the speed limit could change the narrative.

Suddenly, instead of being the victim, you’re defending your actions.

In other states, this scenario might conclude with you receiving compensation, albeit reduced by your minor fault.

But North Carolina’s somewhat unique stance on the matter paints a different picture.

Here, this small oversight, perhaps completely irrelevant for most intents and purposes, might prevent you from getting full and fair compensation due to the rigorous application of Contributory Negligence.

The stark difference underscores the need for individuals to be well-informed and vigilant, especially when navigating the legalities in North Carolina.

The Significance for North Carolina Accident Victims

The doctrine of Contributory Negligence all too often adversely affects the lives of accident victims, casting a significant shadow over their pursuit of justice post-accident.

With North Carolina being among the few states that firmly uphold this “affirmative defense,” its residents, and visitors who have been involved in an accident, often navigate a distinctive compensation claims landscape, one that diverges notably from the majority of the country.

This landscape isn’t merely a backdrop for legal battles; it can directly shape the outcomes and, ultimately, the lives of accident victims.

Victim of Drunk Driving?

Awareness of this doctrine is vital not only for legal professionals like OBX lawyer Danny Glover but also for anyone involved in a personal injury claim.

Knowledge can be the difference between securing full and fair compensation and walking away empty-handed.

Adjusters, equipped with vast resources and a clear agenda, constantly hunt for any semblance of fault on the victim’s part.

Their aim is straightforward: exploit the Contrib doctrine, diminish the victim’s claim, and escape liability.

It’s a relentless dance, one where the stakes couldn’t be higher for those seeking justice.

The all too frequent use of the Contributory Negligence defense by insurance adjusters only underscores its real-world implications, highlighting the pressing need for claimants to be prepared and represented by an experienced PI lawyer – Danny Glover, OBX Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Challenging Contributory Negligence

• Collecting evidence can be crucial: The aftermath of an accident may involve a whirlwind of emotions and confusion, making it easy to overlook important details. But it’s during these pivotal moments that gathering irrefutable evidence becomes important. Whether it’s photographs that capture the scene, testimonies from onlookers that provide a firsthand account, or an official accident report that documents the circumstances of the wreck, proving fault through documented evidence can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful accident claim. A solid foundation of facts not only fortifies a claim but also serves to protect against attempts to skew the narrative.
• Seek Experienced Legal Advice Early: The labyrinth of legalities post-accident can be daunting, especially when Contributory Negligence may be alleged. Before plunging headfirst into negotiations, settlements, or even providing statements, it’s a good idea to have a seasoned personal injury lawyer, like Danny Glover, on your side. Legal representation by someone who is well-versed with the nuances of North Carolina’s accident laws helps ensure you’re not just reacting, but proactively strategizing.
• Know the Exceptions: The doctrine of Contributory Negligence in North Carolina, while undeniably strict, is not without its nuances. That includes something called the “last clear chance doctrine.” Being aware of these intricacies and understanding how they might apply to your particular insurance claim is important.

Factors to Consider When Selecting Local Legal Counsel

• Geographic Proximity | The ability of counsel to physically visit accident scenes for immediate documentation.
• Local Court Experience | Familiarity with the specific administrative procedures and scheduling in Dare County and the First Judicial District.
• Resource Accessibility | Having an office located in the community where the accident occurred for easier client meetings and evidence coordination.
• Focus on Local Traffic Patterns | Understanding the seasonal traffic shifts and unique road conditions of the Outer Banks.

Questions After a North Carolina Accident | What You Need to Know

More Helpful Information about Outer Banks Accidents

• Nags Head Insurance Claims: What You Need to Know
• How much is your Accident Claim worth?
• Drunk Driving Accidents and Punitive Damages in NC
• Motorcycle Accidents: Who is At Fault?
• Are Motorcycle Accidents Different?
• There is NO SUCH THING as an “Accident”
• What you need to know about Trucking Accidents
• Wrongful Death Claims in North Carolina
• OBX Bicycle Accident Victims: We’d like to help
• Pedestrian Accidents: Who is “At Fault” in a wreck?
• How long do you have to file a claim?

Talk to a Local OBX Accident Lawyer | Danny Glover

The legal landscape in North Carolina can be a challenge for accident victims. While the doctrine of contributory negligence can make recovery difficult, it is not always impossible. Navigating personal injury cases (car accidents, motorcycle wrecks, trucking accidents) often benefit from a detailed investigation of the facts and a direct response to insurance company denials.

If an insurance company denies a claim based on “contrib,” the specific details of the event may benefit from an objective evaluation. Factors like seasonal traffic patterns and environmental conditions in Dare County can be complex, and these elements are sometimes overlooked in a standard insurance investigation.

Under N.C.G.S. § 1-139, the party alleging contributory negligence carries the burden of proving that the injured person’s own actions were a proximate cause of the accident.

Contact the Glover Law Firm

• Direct Line | 252-299-5300
• Local Office | 105 N Road St, Elizabeth City, NC 27909
• Free Consultation | Confidential case evaluations for accident victims

Understanding the value of your personal injury claim and damages after a wreck is essential to ensuring that you receive fair compensation for your losses.

Before talking with an adjuster, we believe it best to consult an experienced accident lawyer first. Don’t sign anything or accept a settlement offer without the advice of an attorney.

Beyond physical injuries and emotional trauma, car accidents often come with significant financial costs, medical bills, lost income, and non-economic damages. The total amount of an insurance claim can add up pretty quickly – Danny Glover, Outer Banks Accident Lawyer

In this blog post, we will discuss the factors that determine the value of personal injury claims and the damages you may be entitled to after a car accident.

How much is your accident claim worth?

In a personal injury case after a car accident, the value of your claim will depend on the extent of the physical injuries and emotional trauma incurred and the costs associated with treating these injuries.

Punitive Damages: Drunk Driver Accidents

In general, the greater the severity of the injuries and the more complicated the treatment plan, the higher the value of the claim.

The value of a personal injury claim is determined by factors such as:

• The cost of medical treatment, both present and future
• Lost wages or income due to missed work
• Future earning potential affected by the injuries
• Physical pain and suffering
• Loss of enjoyment of life, activity, or independence
• Emotional distress, including anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

An experienced personal injury attorney can help you identify all the losses and expenses you may have incurred as a result of the accident and compile a comprehensive claim for compensation.

This process can be complicated.

As such, we believe having the right legal representation by your side is crucial.

Types of Damages in a Personal Injury Claim

After a car accident, you may be able to claim different types of damages. They may include things like:

Economic damages

Represent quantifiable and documented financial losses such as medical bills, lost wages, and property damage costs.

Non-economic damages

Include physical and emotional harm from the accident, such as pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life.

Punitive damages

Punitive damages may be awarded in cases where the defendant’s actions were particularly egregious, intentional, criminal, or malicious.

Trucking Accidents / 18-Wheeler Wrecks: What You Need to Know

It is important to note that the amount of compensation you may receive for any particular loss depends on several factors unique to your case.

Having an experienced personal injury attorney on your side can help ensure you receive the proper compensation.

What are “Punitive Damages?”

Punitive damages are additional compensatory damages available to the victim in certain cases where the defendant’s actions were particularly egregious, criminal, intentional, or malicious.

Punitive damages in North Carolina may be awarded when a drunk driver causes an accident and are meant to punish the at-fault party for their behavior.

The amount of punitive damages awarded can vary greatly, depending on the severity of the incident.

Who does the Insurance Adjuster represent?

The insurance adjuster is ordinarily an employee of the at-fault party’s insurance company. That means they represent the insurance company’s best interests and not you.

It is important to remember that their primary goal is to minimize payouts and protect the financial interests of their employer, not yours – Danny Glover, OBX Accident Lawyer

While they may be very nice, if the insurance company can settle for below the fair value of your case, they’re just fine with that.

Insurance companies make money by denying claims and paying out less than they should, so it is important to have an experienced personal injury attorney on your side who can fight for the maximum compensation you deserve.

Is North Carolina a Contributory Negligence state?

Yes, North Carolina is a contributory negligence state. This means that if you are found to be partially responsible for the accident or injury, then you can be barred from recovering damages.

That’s one reason we believe it is essential for you to have an experienced personal injury attorney on your side who understands the complex laws surrounding contributory negligence in the state of North Carolina.

Contrib in North Carolina is commonly pled by insurance companies. It gives the adjuster an opportunity to deny the claim entirely, even when the at fault driver is actually 100% responsible for the wreck – Danny Glover, Accident Attorney Outer Banks

What does “Contingent Legal Fees” mean?

Contingent legal fees mean that your lawyer will not charge you legal fees up front.

Instead, they take a percentage of the settlement or award amount at the end of the case. This allows injury victims to obtain quality representation without having to worry about coming up with legal fees beforehand.

If we are unable to secure compensation in your case, you pay nothing towards legal fees. We do not charge by the hour, and we don’t get paid unless we’re able to obtain a settlement, verdict, or judgment against the at fault driver.

Will a Personal Injury Lawsuit be required?

In some cases, an injury claim can be settled with the insurance company without even filing a lawsuit. However, if the insurance company is unwilling to offer a fair settlement, then it may be necessary to file a personal injury lawsuit.

We can help you understand your legal rights and advise whether filing a lawsuit is in your best interests.

How much is an average personal injury settlement?

Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to this question as the amount of a personal injury settlement can vary greatly, depending on various factors such as the severity of your injuries, medical bills incurred, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

Having an experienced personal injury attorney by your side can help ensure you receive full and fair compensation for your medical expenses, pain and suffering damages, lost income, and medical bills for surgery, aftercare, and physical therapy.

Are you entitled to receive compensation for the cost of care?

Medical bills may include more than just a visit to the ER or your doctor. They may also include long-term costs such as prescription medications, physical therapy and rehabilitation, medical devices or appliances, home care assistance, and more.

If you have been injured in an accident due to another person or entity’s negligence, you may be entitled to receive compensation for these medical expenses. It is important to

Personal Injury Attorney – Danny Glover

Car accidents can cause severe physical, emotional, and financial harm.

Understanding the value of your personal injury claim and damages after a car accident is essential to ensure you receive fair compensation for your losses.

If you or a loved one has been involved in a car accident, contact Danny Glover, Jr. to discuss your options and to discuss your legal options.

We help people throughout North Eastern, North Carolina including places like:

• Kill Devil Hills NC
• Hertford NC
• Hatteras NC
• Elizabeth City NC
• Edenton NC
• Chowan County NC

An important part of true justice involves holding the drunken driver accountable.

Make no mistake. It was NOT a car “accident.”

No one forced the intoxicated driver to get behind the wheel, putting your life and the lives of everyone else on the road in peril.

DUI accidents involve grossly negligent behavior.

It also is a criminal offense that carries serious consequences for the impaired driver.

Indeed, if drunk driving results in a fatality or serious injuries to another (serious bodily injury), that may be indicted as a felony offense in the State of North Carolina.

If you are looking for an experienced attorney, Danny Glover would like to help.

Do I need a lawyer?

Danny has decades of practical courtroom experience handling personal injury cases, including fighting for the legal rights of DUI accident victims.

In fact, he’s a former President of the North Carolina Advocates for Justice (NCAJ).

Contact Danny today for a free case evaluation.

Justice for Drunk Driving Accident Victims

If you are the victim of drunk driving, first, our hearts go out to you.

We are terribly sorry you’re going through this.

Drunk Driving is not an “accident.” There is no reason the wreck had to occur.

DUI is avoidable if people act right and consider the safety of others.

The other driver’s insurance company may be responsible for more than the mere “negligence” of the at-fault driver.

A DUI accident may involve legal liability for something personal injury lawyers may refer to as Gross Negligence.

In addition to criminal penalties, there may be personal legal liability and punitive damages.

I’m a courtroom lawyer, a litigator. I help victims of drunk driving accidents. I’ve seen the carnage such irresponsible behavior can cause to families – Danny Glover, OBX Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer

We handle civil claims involving negligence on a contingency fee basis.

That means we only receive legal fees if we are successful in obtaining a settlement or verdict.

What should I do if I am involved in a drunk driving accident?

If you are a victim and have been seriously injured in a drunk driving accident, it is important to hold the drunk driver accountable.

Drunk driving is a serious problem in the United States. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), there are more than 10,00 drunk driving deaths on an annual basis.

Indeed, estimated traffic deaths in 2021 were the highest they’ve been in fifteen years!

The plague of drunk driving is getting worse, not better.

Do NOT Wait – Go to the Doctor

If you have been involved in a car accident, it is important that you seek medical attention right away – even if you don’t think you are seriously injured.

When should you hire a lawyer?

Don’t try to tough it out or muscle through your injuries.

Often, injuries from car accidents are not immediately apparent.

A delay in seeking treatment can complicate your health condition and make it more difficult to recover compensation for your injuries and accident-related losses.

Gather Proof and Collect Evidence

If you are able, take pictures of the accident scene and get the contact information for any witnesses to make part of the insurance claim.

You will also want to get the other driver’s insurance information.

Be sure to get the name of the insurance company, the policy number, and the name of the insured of the drunk driver’s insurance company.

You should also get any other driver’s contact information who may have been involved in the automobile accident, including their name, address, phone number, and email address.

They could be an important witness in a personal injury lawsuit.

Part of making a claim of damages includes gathering proof/documentation of:

Medical Bills

All medical treatment related to the accident should be documented, including ambulance bills, hospitalization, prescriptions, physical therapy, and any other out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Lost Wages and Economic Damages

You may be able to recover lost wages if you had to miss work because of your injuries.

This can be proven with things like pay stubs, tax returns, and employment verification.

If you are unable to return to work or have to take a lower-paying job because of your injuries, you may be entitled to lost earning capacity damages.

Wrongful Death Claims

This is different than lost wages and is meant to compensate you for the earnings you would have made had you not been injured.

Pain and Suffering – Emotional Distress

Pain and suffering are intangible losses that the car accident caused can be more difficult to prove.

However, they can have a significant impact on your life and may be an important aspect of the legal process.

You may be able to recover damages for the physical pain and suffering you experienced as a result of your injuries.

You may also be able to recover emotional distress damages, which can include things like anxiety, depression, PTSD, loss of enjoyment of life, and more.

Police Reports – Accident Reports

If the police responded to the accident, they will ordinarily create a report, whether that takes the form of a Police Report, Officer Summary, Police Officer Narrative, or Accident Report.

An Accident Report may be helpful to your case.

It was NOT an “Accident”

It will document the location of the accident, the weather conditions, road conditions, vehicle damage, and other important information.

Witness Statements

If you have any witnesses to the accident, you will want to get their contact information and statement about what they saw.

Their testimony may be crucial to your case.

Social Media

Be aware that anything people post on social media, including pictures and comments, may be used as evidence both in civil court and criminal court.

That applies as much to the at-fault driver as it does to victims of drunk driving accidents and any other vehicles involved.

You should avoid posting anything about the accident or your injuries on social media.

Photographs, Videos, Drawings, and Diagrams

In addition to taking photographs of the accident scene, you should also take pictures of your injuries.

You should do this as soon as possible after the accident, while your injuries are still fresh.

If you have visible injuries, make sure to take close-up pictures as well as pictures of the overall injuries.

If you have any bruises, swelling, cuts, or scrapes, take close-up pictures of those too.

You should take pictures of your injuries from different angles and at different times to document the progression of your injuries.

Get Legal Advice You Can Trust

After you have been involved in a car accident, it is important that you seek legal advice from an experienced personal injury attorney with substantial experience handling drunk driving claims.

Danny Glover is an experienced personal injury attorney who represents clients injured in car accidents, including drunk driving accidents.

He has a proven track record of success.

Danny Glover will fight to get you the compensation you deserve for your injuries.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a drunk driving accident, contact Danny Glover today for a free consultation.

Do NOT apologize for the wreck

Drunk driving is a serious offense with potentially deadly consequences.

If you have been injured in a drunk driving accident, it is important to hold the drunk driver accountable and not blame yourself.

Innocent comments such as “I wish I’d seen them sooner” or “I don’t know if I could have done anything to avoid the accident” could seriously and adversely affect your claim for damages.

According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), drunk driving fatalities have increased substantially since 2021.

In North Carolina, it is estimated that one person is killed every day in a drunk driving accident.

If you have lost a loved one in a drunk driving accident, you may be able to file a wrongful death claim against the at-fault driver – Danny Glover Jr., Personal Injury Attorney

A skilled personal injury lawyer can help you understand your legal options and ensure that your rights are protected.

Danny Glover is a drunk driving accident lawyer who has represented many victims of drunk drivers.

He knows the ins and outs of the insurance claim process and can help you get the compensation you deserve

You Have Legal Rights and Options

DUI may open up the other driver to a civil case for punitive damages and possibly subject them to individual liability for your personal injury case.

Insurance claims in North Carolina are relatively complicated. DUI victims may have coverage under the UM or UIM parts of your insurance – Danny Glover, OBX Personal Injury Lawyer

Drunk Driving Accident Lawsuits – How Do They Work?

Litigation and filing a formal civil claim for damages is not always required; but, if the insurance company fails to proceed in good faith, your lawyer should be willing to file suit if necessary.

“I am a courtroom lawyer. We’re not afraid to take a case to trial and argue it to a jury. I’ve found the settlement process tends to be more fruitful when plaintiffs’ lawyers have trial skills that come from years of practical courtroom experience – Danny Glover, OBX Car Crash Lawyer

Filing a Lawsuit – Filing Suit – Litigation in North Carolina

The decision to file a lawsuit is one that should not be made lightly.

You will be entrusting your case to an attorney, and you will be asking that attorney to devote significant time and resources to pursuing your claim.

To successfully sue, the process of filing suit also requires that you, the client, make a number of decisions that will likely have a significant impact on the outcome of your case.

You should discuss these decisions with your lawyer, and you should make sure that you understand the options available to you and the likely consequences of each option before making any decisions.

Discovery – Investigate and Gather Evidence

A lawyer will help you investigate the accident to find out who was really at fault.

If the drunk driver was not the only one responsible, you may be able to receive compensation from another party as well for your medical care and property damage.

Your attorney will also work to gather evidence that prove the other driver was intoxicated.

This may include obtaining surveillance footage from the police officer’s BWC – Body Worn Camera, speaking to witnesses, and getting the results of the drunk driver’s blood alcohol test.

Compensation – Fight for the Compensation You Deserve

You should not have to bear the financial burden of someone else’s negligence or gross negligence, as the case may be.

If you have been injured in a drunk driving accident, you may be entitled to compensation for your medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and more, including punitive damages.

An experienced drunk driving accident lawyer will fight for the maximum compensation you deserve.

What are Punitive Damages?

Punitive damages are designed to punish the drunk driver for their actions and to deter others from driving while intoxicated.

In some cases, punitive damages may be awarded in addition to compensatory damages.

To learn more about your legal rights and options after being injured in a drunk driving accident, contact OBX Accident Lawyer Danny Glover today for a free consultation.

Danny Glover – Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer – OBX Outer Banks

Drunk driving accidents are all too common, and they often result in serious injuries or even death.

Danny Glover is an experienced drunk driving accident lawyer who has represented numerous clients injured by drunk drivers.

If you have been injured in a drunk driving accident, contact Danny Glover today for a free consultation to discuss your case.

Danny will fight to get you the compensation you deserve.

Not only are you working through the aftermath of the accident itself, but you may also have to deal with insurance companies and legal proceedings.

If you’re not sure where to start, choosing a personal injury lawyer in Elizabeth City may seem a daunting task.

But don’t worry – we’re here to help!

In this blog post, we’ll discuss some tips for choosing a car accident lawyer who will look out for your best interests.

Keep reading to learn more!

Protect Your Rights After Car Accidents

After a wreck, it’s important to seek legal help as soon as possible.

Personal injury attorneys will be able to advise you on your rights and help you navigate the legal process.

Lawyers who handle OBX accident cases

They can also negotiate with the insurance companies on your behalf, so you can focus on recovering from the accident.

In Elizabeth City, there are a number of lawyers to choose from.

How do you decide which Personal Injury Lawyer is right for you?

Here are some tips:

Do Your Research

The best way to find a lawyer is by doing your research.

There are many reputable law firms in Elizabeth City NC, so take the time to read reviews and professional accolades.

It’s important to find a lawyer who is right for you – someone you feel comfortable with and can trust during the attorney client relationship.

Ask Around

If you know anyone who has been in a car accident, ask them for a recommendation of a law firm.

They may have used a lawyer in the past and be able to recommend a personal injury lawyer who is knowledgeable and experienced.

Get in Touch

Schedule a consultation so you can discuss your case and get to know the lawyer.

This is also an opportunity for them to assess whether they think they can help you.

Choose a Personal Injury Lawyer Who Has Substantial Experience with Car Accidents

Not every law firm regularly handle car accident cases.

Make sure the lawyer you choose has experience dealing with cases like yours.

No Such Thing as an “Accident”

Hiring a car accident lawyer is an important decision – be sure to choose someone who you feel confident in and who will fight for your rights.

The attorney client relationship is predicated on trust, transparency, and the willingness to help you through this challenging time.

What do lawyers mean when they call something a Personal Injury case?

A personal injury case is a type of legal issue that occurs when one person (the victim) suffers harm from an accident or injury, and someone else (the “tortfeasor”) might be legally responsible for damages.

In Elizabeth City and throughout Northeastern North Carolina, car wrecks, trucking accidents, bicycle accidents, and pedestrian injuries are common types of personal injury cases.

Unfortunately, so are wrongful death cases resulting from a car crash or motorcycle accident.

If you’ve been in a car accident, choosing a car accident lawyer who is experienced and knowledgeable about the law is essential.

You may be entitled to damages for all your injuries and those of a family member injured in the crash.

Insurance claims for the wreck may include things like:

• Medical Expenses
• Emergency Transport (Ambulance / Helicopter)
• Emergency Room Bills
• Costs of Surgery
• Neck Injuries
• Lost Wages
• Wrongful Death – Funeral Expenses and Compensation to the Family for Lost Wages

Do I need a lawyer for an accident case?

If you’ve been injured in a car wreck in Pasquotank County, you may be wondering if you need a lawyer.

The short answer is: It depends.

There are some cases where it makes sense to represent yourself and there are other cases where we think you definitely deserve legal advice that only a lawyer can provide.

If the insurance company is offering a settlement that you feel is fair and you don’t have any other complicating factors, then you might not need a lawyer.

What is Contributory Negligence?

On the other hand, if you are facing a long road to recovery with costly medical bills, then you will likely need legal representation to get the most compensation possible.

No matter what your situation is, we always recommend that you consult with a car accident lawyer from the Outer Banks to get their professional opinion on your case.

At the end of the day, the decision of whether or not to hire a lawyer is up to you.

But if you’ve been injured in a car accident, we think it’s always worth at least getting a free consultation today.

At the Danny Glover Law Firm, we like to begin working immediately on investigating the causes of the wreck to determine liability, understand your individual goals, and set a path towards the best manner in which to proceed.

When is the best time to hire an attorney?

Ideally, you should hire a lawyer as soon after the accident as possible.

Statute of Limitations for Personal Injury Cases in North Carolina

Attorneys like to collect evidence and witness statements while everything is still fresh.

It’s also important to note that most personal injury lawyers work on a contingency basis, which means they only get paid if you win your case.

So, if you don’t hire a lawyer and don’t win your case, then you won’t have to pay legal fees.

What should I consider when choosing a lawyer?

There are a few things you should consider when choosing a car accident law firm:

Experience – How much experience does the lawyer have with car accident cases?

Reputation – What do other attorneys say about this lawyer?

Availability – Can this lawyer take on your case and how long will it take them to start working on it?

Costs – How much will it cost to hire this lawyer and will they work on a contingency basis?

What will the Law Firm need for the first visit?

When meeting with a lawyer for the first time, it’s important to bring as much information as possible.

This will help them get started on your case right away.

We like to review:

• A copy of the police report from the accident, if one is available
• Any medical records or bills related to the injury or injuries that you may have
• Your insurance information
• The contact information of any witnesses to the accident

After your initial consultation, your lawyer will likely ask you to sign a contingency fee agreement.

7 Steps to Take After an Accident

This is an agreement between you and the law firm that says how much they will be paid if they win your case.

It’s important to note that most personal injury lawyers work on a contingency basis, which means they only get paid if you win your case.

If you don’t hire a lawyer and don’t win your case, then you won’t have to pay legal fees.

What questions should I ask during an initial consultation?

During your initial consultation with a potential car accident lawyer, we

What are the legal fees for accident cases in North Carolina?

In North Carolina, accident lawyers typically work on a contingency fee basis. This means that they only get paid if you win your case.

How long will it take to resolve my case?

It typically takes between 12 and 18 months to resolve a car injury case in North Carolina.

However, this can vary depending on the complexity of the case and how many parties are involved and if everyone involved is from the NC area or out-of-state.

If settlement cannot be negotiated and a personal injury lawsuit is required, that may extend how long it takes to resolve the dispute.

Can I just ask some questions and find out my legal rights?

Yes, you can absolutely ask some questions and find out your legal rights in North Carolina.

In Elizabeth City NC, a PI law firm will ordinarily offer free consultations to potential clients.

This is a good opportunity for you to ask some questions and get a feel for the lawyer’s experience and what they would recommend for your case.

Is it better to have an attorney or represent myself in a car accident case?

At the end of the day, the decision of whether or not to hire a law firm is up to you.

But if you’ve been injured in a car accident, we think it’s always worth at least getting a free consultation.

Your lawyer will be able to provide you with more information about your specific case and tell you what they think is the best course of action.

We believe you will be at a tremendous disadvantage if you try to handle the case yourself.

Insurance adjusters are not there to help you or do the right thing and offer fair compensation.

That’s true even if their insured, the party who caused the wreck, jumped out of the car a moment afterward, and said, “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

They represent the at fault party.

If they can settle a claim for less than it’s worth, that is profitable for the insurance company. It’s even better if they can deny the claim and pay nothing.

If you have been injured in a car accident, please contact our law firm for a free consultation.

Our legal team lead by Danny Glover Jr. would be happy to discuss your case with you and answer any questions you may have.

What should I look for when hiring a car accident lawyer?

We think one of the most important things to look for when hiring a car accident law firm in Elizabeth City NC is experience.

You want to hire a lawyer who has successfully handled cases similar to yours in the past. . .in Elizabeth City NC.

It’s also important to find a lawyer who is available and can start working on your case right away.

Finally, you want to make sure you feel comfortable with the lawyer and feel like they are fighting for you.

Do all lawyers in Elizabeth City handle accident cases?

No, not all lawyers in Elizabeth City NC handle accident cases.

But we do, and we would be happy to discuss your case with you.

Call Danny Glover Jr now at: 252-299-5300

Is it a good idea to hire a local lawyer in Elizabeth City, North Carolina?

Yes, we think it’s a good idea to hire a local lawyer.

They will be familiar with the local court system, expert witnesses, and the preferred protocols in presenting a claim for damages.

What are some other things I should know about choosing a car accident lawyer?

Here are a few more things to keep in mind when choosing a car accident lawyer:

• Make sure you feel comfortable with the lawyer and that they are fighting for you
• Find a lawyer who has experience handling cases similar to yours
• Hire a local lawyer who is familiar with the Elizabeth City court system.

REQUEST A FREE CASE EVALUATION

If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident, please contact us today for a free case evaluation.

We would be happy to discuss your case with you, get all the facts, and answer any questions you may have.

We help clients with:

• Motorcycle Accidents
• Bicycle Accidents
• Pedestrian Injuries

You can reach us at 252-299-5300 or by email at Danny@DannyGloverLawFirm.com

For more information about Danny Glover Jr. – Click Here

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you for reading! We hope this blog post was helpful in giving you some information.

Other accidents on the Outer Banks may appear at first to be relatively minor, only to later develop into substantial claims with the need for long-term medical care due to permanent injuries.

And some accidents like 18-wheeler wrecks, bicycle accidents, and motorcycle accidents caused by the negligence of another inattentive, negligent driver, deserve the immediate attention of an experienced courtroom lawyer.

Here’s some good news: We do not charge for legal consultation. If you’ve been injured in an OBX wreck due to the negligence of another driver, it doesn’t cost anything to call us and ask questions. And what you tell us is confidential.

We don’t pressure clients into retaining the firm for help. I’ll give you an honest assessment of your case and your legal options, including whether you need a lawyer – Danny Glover, Accident Lawyer OBX

When is the best time to hire a lawyer?

We think it’s a good idea to retain legal counsel and involve an attorney in the process as soon as is reasonably practical. Obviously, that assumes you need a lawyer in the first place.

Don’t call it an “Accident”

There are often important legal rights to preserve that may, in certain circumstances, affect the value of your claim and determine whether you have a case (insurance claim) at all.

If you’re hurt and need to go to the hospital, don’t wait. Seek immediate medical care and treatment. Protect yourself and others from further harm.

Know this: Big insurance companies and their adjusters regularly call victims of accidents, hoping to get a recorded statement or settle quickly.

They may even try to contact you at the hospital or while you’re laid up at home, offering to visit you and talk about the case.

Don’t be fooled. It’s not because the insurance company cares about you or how you’re doing.

Insurance adjusters have a job.

They want to settle a case for as little money as possible. In fact, if they can completely deny a claim by alleging contributory negligence, that is all the more preferable to the insurance company interests.

Last Clear Chance and Contributory Negligence are often incredibly complex, fact-driven legal issues. It’s easy to be lured into imprecisely answering a question that is intended to cause problems with your case.

Who is responsible for an accident?

It has nothing to do with whether the person who caused the wreck feels bad for you or even apologizes for causing the wreck. In most instances, the person who decides whether to pay an accident claim and for how much (if anything) is most often the insurance adjuster.

There are some important exceptions. If the carrier doesn’t proceed fairly, it may be up to a jury to decide what is fair and how much you are entitled to after an accident. Accident lawyers enjoy helping people resolve disputes, litigating in court when necessary.

If carriers always did the right thing and proceeded fairly, there would be no reason for lawyers. I’d be out of a job – Danny Glover, OBX Personal Injury Lawyer

It’s frankly frustrating to tell good people, “Had you called us sooner we may have been able to help.”

As a general rule, we don’t recommend people give recorded statements without first consulting with a lawyer.

Part of our job is to help explain how accident claims work and what to expect when an insurance adjuster calls. It’s important to be truthful. It’s also important to understand a claims adjuster very well may not have your best interests at heart.

Suggestions if you’ve been involved in a wreck

• Protect Yourself and Your Loved Ones
• Take reasonable steps to avoid additional injuries and damages
• Protect Your Legal Interests
• Take Pictures
• Gather Information
• Write Down Names, Numbers, and Contact Info
• Call the Police
• Seek Immediate Medical Treatment if Injured
• Listen to the advice of Police, Fire Personnel, and the EMT
• If they think you should go to the hospital to “get checked out,” go to the hospital
• DO NOT GIVE A RECORDED STATEMENT to the insurance company or their adjuster without first consulting with an experienced Outer Banks Lawyer

How can an accident lawyer help?

A big part of our job is to protect you and your best interests. Car accident lawyers help preserve and recover damages.

We like to jump right in, begin the process of gathering information like accident reports, witness statements, and photographic evidence – Danny Glover, OBX Accident Attorney

Vehicle accidents commonly involve property damage to your vehicle, lost wages for time off of work, and medical bills. Legal services may include helping accident victims secure full and fair compensation for the trauma associated with a car accident, including their pain and suffering.

What are Punitive Damages?

Each case is unique.

We also assist in negotiating property damage issues involved with the accident. That may involve determining the fair market value of your car, the replacement value, and depreciation issues.

Danny Glover – Outer Banks Attorney

Danny Glover has been helping people with OBX legal issues for years. Whether you live in Elizabeth City or were on vacation to the Outer Banks and have been seriously hurt in a wreck, the staff at the Danny Glover Law Firm is ready and able to answer your questions.

Our job as accident lawyers is to provide guidance and legal advice. Hopefully, the end result is to give you peace of mind and confidence that your best interests are protected – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

Your legal matter deserves the attention of an accident lawyer with substantial experience with claims in Kitty Hawk, Manteo, Nags Head, and the surrounding towns.

When appropriate, proper pleading of contributory negligence in an Answer to a lawsuit may result in completely precluding recovery. It serves as a complete “bar” to recover damages for injuries that may be the result of car accidents, wrecks, and other lawsuits involving claims of negligent operation of a vehicle.

Contributory negligence is not limited to personal injury claims involving accidents. It may also apply for lawsuits alleging assault, battery, and other “torts” involving allegations of damages, permanent injuries, and wrongful death claims.

It is an affirmative defense alleging Plaintiff contributed to the accident and therefore should not be able to recover any form of damages or fair compensation.

What is a Tort?

A “tort” under the law is an act (or the failure to act when required) that results in harm or injury.

It may result from a defendant in a lawsuit acting wrongfully or otherwise be an infringement of a legal right. The failure to act or act appropriately considering the rights and safety of others, under tort law, may result in a legal responsibility or “civil liability.”

Under the common law of North Carolina, contributory negligence serves as a valid defense to tort claims including those alleging negligence and wrongful death claims. It is what Plaintiffs’ lawyers (and defense lawyers) may describe as a complete bar or defense against the plaintiff’s claims.

Plaintiff is barred from recovery. Plaintiff, even if severely injured, gets nothing. The injured party does not recover medical bills or the costs of treatment.

Is Distracted Driving Negligent Driving?

The idea behind contributory negligence is that the injured parties in some way contributed to their own injury or damages. In NC, if the plaintiff is even marginally responsible for their injuries and damages, under the legal theory of contributory negligence, the plaintiff will recover nothing.

Insurance companies regularly allege “contrib” (Contributory Negligence) in denying claims, arguing pure comparative negligence bars any and all forms of recovery including lost wages, pain, suffering, medical bills, disfigurement, scarring, and permanent injuries.

Contributory negligence often leads to an unfair or harsh result. As such, the majority of the US has abolished contributory negligence. Certain states have adopted something called comparative negligence or comparative fault in determining legal responsibility for accidents and injuries.

In comparative negligence states, the injured person’s recovery (the Plaintiff) for damages awarded is reduced by the percentage of fault the Plaintiff is responsible for his or her own injuries, thus affecting the Plaintiff’s recovery.

Who determines Contributory Negligence in NC?

It is up to the Finder of fact to make the determination our fault and the apportionment of responsibility for injuries.

That is not the case in North Carolina. If the plaintiff is even minimally at fault, she or he may be completely precluded from recovering any amount.

Catastrophic Accident and Injury Information

Contributory negligence in the United States was prevalent in the 1800s and 1900s. The idea of contributory negligence originates in Great Britain with the 1st case cited Butterfield v Forester.

When alleging the affirmative defense, the defendant bears the burden of proof to show the plainness in the cause of action was in fact negligent themselves. As such, the defendant must affirmatively plead the defense and prove the plaintiff was in fact negligent and therefore not entitled to recovery for their injury and damages.

The Burden of Proof may shift back and forth in contributory negligence states as there is an additional doctrine recognized in North Carolina called last clear chance.

The Finder of Fact may consider which party (the “last party”) had the opportunity to take action, thus avoiding an accident or injury. It is a relatively complicated legal issue.

If you have questions about Contributory Negligence in North Carolina, legal liability, and the Doctrine of Last Clear Chance, consult an attorney immediately.

Outer Banks Accident Lawyer – Danny Glover Law Firm

If you’ve been injured due to the negligence of another, give Outer Banks lawyer Danny Glover a call immediately.

We love helping people get through difficult times. Consultations are free of charge, Danny Glover, OPX lawyer.

Bringing a cause of action may be subject to certain timing/filing requirements. A Statute of Limitations does apply in North Carolina.

Making a claim for damages with an Insurance Defense carrier does not ordinarily “toll” the Statute of Limitations.

As such, if you or a loved one has been seriously hurt due to the negligence of another, including accidents involving trucks, semi-trailers, 18 wheelers, bicycles, and motorcycles, we are here to help.

Call OBX Attorney Danny Glover now.

All too often, tremendous, catastrophic losses are due to distracted driving.

Despite the well-known correlation between texting while driving and wrecks, a substantial percentage of motorists continue in the incredibly dangerous, if not reckless practice.

We see it day in, day out. People are needlessly harmed, sometimes suffering permanent, life-altering injuries because a certain percentage of drivers just won’t put their phones down – Danny Glover, Accident Lawyer OBX NC

Imagine closing your eyes for even a second or two, driving at the posted speed limit down highway NC 12 on the Outer Banks Scenic Byway.

What is Med Pay?

At 55 miles per hour, a vehicle travels more than 80 feet per second. Looking repetitively at your phone to read and type texts amounts to substantial periods of inattentive, distracted driving.

An average SUV in the United States is somewhere between 14 to 16 feet in length.

In one second a vehicle can travel the distance of approximately five SUV lengths. Double that for a two-second distraction.

Even one to two seconds can substantially affect stopping distances and can mean the difference between a close-call and a full-speed, traumatic collision – Danny Glover, Accident Lawyer Outer Banks NC

Fortunately, some operating systems of cell phones now have the option of a “driving mode.”

Do you handle Wrongful Death claims?

It prevents alerts and texts when the phone senses vehicular movement and/or speeds, thus greatly reducing the incidence of distracted driving.

At some point, both federal and state laws may mandate the implementation of such applications.

North Carolina Mobile Phone Law – Unlawful Use While Driving

The North Carolina General Assembly passed N.C.G.S. § 20-137.4A, ostensibly in an effort to curb texting while driving.

A violation of the law is a Class 2 Misdemeanor, with a minimum fine of $100.

Some plaintiff’s lawyers in North Carolina feel the law doesn’t go far enough.

Unfortunately, violating the texting while driving law in North Carolina is not deemed per se negligence – Danny Glover, Accident Lawyer OBX

It’s a rarely enforced law, despite the clearly dangerous if not reckless practice.

How are Motorcycle Accidents Different?

Of course, there are also other causes of distracted driving including eating and drinking, talking to passengers, adjusting radio stations, watching video on mobile devices, and dealing with disruptive children and pets.

Blind Spots – Failure to Look

Despite enhanced safety features common to all newer vehicles, including airbags, lane monitoring, cameras, and automatic emergency stop / anti-collision protections, some cars and trucks have blind spots.

Front, rear, and side cameras, and the automated warning signals in mirrors, are intended to supplement ordinary care practices.

Before changing lanes, safe drivers should also do a “shoulder check,” looking around the vehicle.

Mirrors, cameras, and warning systems may not indicate a motorcycle, moped, bicycle, or even some other cars in a blind spot – Danny Glover, Accident Attorney

Visual checks aren’t just recommended. A quick check of the surrounding area and vehicles on the roadway are an expected aspect of ordinary care.

Failure to do so, even if unintentional, may be negligent.

North Caroline General Statute § 20-154 sets forth the NC traffic law regarding Stopping, Starting, and Turning Vehicles.

Before stopping, starting, or turning the operator of a motor vehicle shall first see that can be done safely.

Pedestrian Accidents in NC

It also mandates the use of a signal if any pedestrian may be affected by the stop, start, or turn.

Signals that are plainly visible are similarly required to protect other vehicles (including bicycles, scooters, and mopeds) on the roadway that may be affected by the start, stop, or turn.

Seat Belts in NC

The NHTSA the National Highway Safety Traffic Safety Administration indicates more than 40% of fatal truck accidents are car accidents that involve the failure to wear a seat belt and/or be properly secured in a restraint system.

Seat belt use reduces passenger car crash fatalities by approximately 45%. It also lowers the risk of injuries (moderate to critical) by 50%.

The metrics get better for light trucks, with a 60% fatality reduction associated with seat belt use and 65% for moderate to critical injuries – Danny Glover, Personal Injury Attorney OBX

How long do I have to File a Claim?

Unlike texting while driving, a fair number of NC traffic tickets (citations) are issued for violations of the North Carolina seat belt laws.

In 2019 there were more than 80,000 traffic tickets issued to drivers for their failure to buckle-up.

More than 11,000 front seat passengers received seat belt tickets and there were more than 9,500 rear passenger violations for failing to wear a seat belt.

Outer Banks Accident Lawyer – Danny Glover

We help people who have been injured due to the negligence of others.

Whether it’s related to the failure to maintain a proper lookout, distracted driving, or texting while driving, we focus on fair and just compensation – Danny Glover

Legal consultations for accident cases at the Glover Law Firm are confidential.

What you disclose to us, consistent with the attorney-client privilege, is confidential.

Call Danny Glover Jr NOW to schedule a consultation: 252-299-5300

The last thing vacationers want to deal with is an accident while on a get-away. Even a minor bump-up can be a hassle if you’re from out-of-town.

Most people know a local lawyer if they need legal help back home.

Calling friends, family, and co-workers for a referral and reference may take a bit of time, but it’s not an insurmountable task.

If you’re not from the OBX community, it can be a time-consuming process finding an accident attorney who is experienced not just with the area of law but where you were hurt. I firmly believe your case deserves a local attorney who understands the local protocols and nuances of the Outer Banks – Danny Glover, Outer Banks Accident Lawyer

What should I do after an accident?

Immediately following an accident, while still “on-scene,” first make sure you and your passengers are safe.

Some of the most serious, life-threatening wrecks take place during secondary collisions when people are still dazed, walking around the accident scene.

That is especially true on high-traffic roadways, highways, and areas with a substantial number of cars, pedestrians, bicycles, etc.

While travel speeds on highways, including those with 18-Wheeler traffic, have the potential for high-impact collisions, a substantial number of serious injuries occur in relatively low-speed areas and downtown areas.

A lot depends on the nature and circumstances of the accident. Pedestrians, bicycles, and motorcycles do not have the protections afforded by cars upon impact. Low speed collisions can and do result in traumatic injuries – Danny Glover

After confirming you are safe, you may wish to check on other vehicles and people involved in the accident.

It’s also a good idea to call 911, even in minor collisions as there may be important information to exchange, paperwork to complete, and at times, traffic tickets and citations to be issued.

OBX Bicycle Accidents

Take pictures of the resting positions of the vehicles involved. Take pictures of license plates, Take pictures of any information that is shared like driver’s licenses, registration, insurance cards, etc., if possible.

If your vehicle or other vehicles involved in the wreck are blocking the roadway, assuming it is safe to do so, move them either off the roadway or as far to the side as the road as is practicable.

There are certain duties under the NC accident laws and the NC Criminal Laws regarding remaining on the scene of the accident, rendering aid, and exchanging of information.

Failure to do so can not only adversely affect your accident claim. It can also result in criminal charges.

What information do I need to give to the police?

Again, how to handle things on an accident scene depends a lot on the nature, circumstances, and location of the wreck.

Generally speaking, medics, police, NC Highway Patrol, and other “first responders,” will want to assess the accident scene.

They will want to prevent additional collisions and injuries.

That includes both the safety of the people involved in the accident as well as other law enforcement officers, EMT personnel, tow-truck drivers, and other passing motorists.

That can involve removing people trapped in vehicles, transporting to the hospital, and in some instances, rendering emergency medical treatment, aiding people on-scene with life-threatening injuries.

Thereafter they may direct moving vehicles, assigning a process and personnel to an investigation.

There may be a division of labor among first responders, where some police officers gather evidence, speak to witnesses, and handle the accident investigation.

Should I hire a lawyer?

Other officers may be involved in crowd-control, directing traffic, and supervising moving vehicles and roadway cleanup.

When appropriate, officers may begin a “drunk driving” investigation, conducting dexterity tests, a breathalyzer, etc., if someone has had too much to drink and possibly caused the wreck.

As such, once official personnel arrives, let them take lead. Let them direct what needs to be done. Listen to their instructions and follow them.

Once the scene is “secured,” officers involved with the accident investigation, including the officer or officers responsible for preparing and filing an official Accident Report, will likely begin by gathering information.

Information gathering can be one of the most important aspects of a case. It’s not just a matter of looking at the cars and deciding what happened – Danny Glover

In addition to taking photographs of the accident scene, police officers (law enforcement) may want your driver’s license, a copy of the vehicle registration, rental agreement paperwork, if any, and your insurance card.

It’s also not unusual to separate the parties (the people involved in the accident) to determine what happened and who is at fault.

No such thing as an “Accident”

Outer Banks Accident Lawyer

If you or a loved one has been hurt in an OBX wreck, we’re here to help.

Danny Glover Jr. is a local, Outer Banks Attorney with substantial courtroom experience helping people with serious personal injury matters, traumatic injury cases, and wrongful death claims.

My law firm is dedicated to compassionate legal representation for clients who have been hurt due to the negligence of others. We’re here to help – Danny Glover, OBX Attorney

Call now to schedule a confidential consultation. Talking to us is entirely free. We do not charge consultation fees.

Everything you tell lawyers in North Carolina, including during the initial consultation, remains subject to the attorney-client privilege.

Lawyers are trusted with sensitive information. As such, we keep and protect such confidences.

You may also email: Danny@DannyGloverLawFirm.com

Video evidence in North Carolina is no longer limited to DWI charges or other traffic violations.

Evidence captured on dash cams can be an effective tool in civil personal injury matters/trials.

Video doesn’t lie.

Factual disputes in court regarding what took place and who is responsible for an accident can be cleared up quickly by the impartial lens of a dashboard camera.

Dash Cameras can be extremely helpful in North Carolina, where contributory negligence is a common defense in car accidents and negligence claims – Danny Glover, Outer Banks Accident Lawyer

The good news is, dash cams are reasonably priced and easy to mount.

Many big box stores and car audio shops in northeastern North Carolina carry them.

If you were involved in a car accident or have been injured due to another driver’s negligence, dashcam footage of what caused the accident, including the traffic on the road, speeds, and distances between the vehicles, etc., may be downloaded and presented as evidence.

As such, video evidence can be the difference between denial of a claim vs admission of liability for things like lost wages, property damage, and medical bills.

Features You Should Consider Before Buying a Dash Cam

Before going online and buying something on Amazon, it doesn’t hurt to consider the different dash cam options that are now available.

Take a look at the screen size and the way the camera is mounted.

While we may call them “dash cams,” a good number of in-car video recording units attach to the windshield, sun visor, and rear-view mirror.

Try to get a dash camera that records audio as well as video.

Here are some other helpful features to consider in making your purchase:

1. High Resolution or “Hi-Res” recording is a really good idea. Cheaper dash cams tend to have lower-quality recording features, resulting in a blurry video. 12 MP – Megapixel resolution and 1080p HD – High Definition video makes for a better, more clear video recording.
2. Loop Recording – Space on memory cards can become an issue if you do not have a “loop recording.” The dash cam will automatically overwrite old, irrelevant video footage, freeing up space on the memory card. That saves time by eliminating the need to manually delete old dash cam footage to free up space on the card.
3. Recording at Night: Low Light Level Recording – Car accidents, wrecks, collisions, etc., may take place when it is dark outside and visibility is reduced. In smaller Outer Banks towns and rural areas, there may not be street lighting. Night recording features, especially those that help stabilize and clear-up low-level-light recordings, are a great idea. In fact, cameras may record what the human eye cannot make out, documenting license plate numbers, vehicle make and model, and driver features.

Video Evidence: Motorcycle Accidents, Trucking Accidents, and Car Wrecks

Dash cams can protect you from fraudulent claims and insurance-fraud schemes. That’s one reason many fleet vehicles are now installing dash cameras as a protection for drivers of 18-wheelers.

For the same reason, more-and-more bicyclists and motorcycle drivers are now also wearing video recording devices.

Proving the tortfeasor liable (the person responsible for the accident) can be cleared up with video evidence in North Carolina.

It also serves as a protection against claims and defenses alleging Contributory Negligence and Last Clear Chance by insurance adjusters and big insurance companies seeking to deny liability.

Video evidence can capture, without favor or bias, who is negligent, who is responsible, and whether contributory negligence is a legitimate defense.

If your claim is denied by the insurance company alleging “causality issues,” refusing to pay for damage to your vehicle (property damage) or personal injuries (medical bills, EMT, surgery, etc.,) or lost wages, video evidence can make a substantial difference to the bottom line.

If you have been injured, call Outer Banks Accident Lawyer Danny Glover NOW: 252-299-5300 to schedule your FREE CONSULTATION. You may also email Danny Glover directly at: Danny@DannyGloverLawFirm.com

Where can I buy a Dash Camera?

1. Elizabeth City Walmart
2. Outer Banks Best Buy
3. Kitty Hawk Walmart Superstore

Additional information about Personal Injury cases:

1. What should I do after an accident?
2. Who is responsible for an accident?
3. What is Contributory Negligence in North Carolina?
4. There no such thing as an “accident”
5. Can they deny my claim?
6. NC Police Video Recording Law

Was 2019 a good year? What things could be better in 2020? Are there issues in your life that remain unsettled or are a hassle?

It seems everyone today is focusing on balance. Starting the year with fewer worries and sources of frustration makes sense.

If you spent 2019 dealing with an insurance adjuster, one of your New Year’s Resolutions may involve asking an accident lawyer to help – Danny Glover, Outer Banks Personal Injury Attorney

Working through a settlement, one that fairly compensates you, may prove to be a time-consuming, laborious process. It also can be a trigger for unnecessary stress.

Personal injury cases are notoriously complex, requiring documentation of property damage, lost wages, and medical records relating to the accident claim.

It wasn’t an “accident”

First-and-foremost, if you were injured as the result of a car wreck or other “personal injury” matter, it was not an “accident.”

Negligence is not accidental. A choice was made.

Acting in a legally negligent way may involve speeding or texting or even drunk driving. If you were injured because of the negligence of another, while perhaps not intentional, they failed in their duty of due care and reasonableness.

Wrecks caused by DWI/DUI also may subject the tortfeasor to punitive damages.

Drunk driving most certainly is not an “accident.” Breaking the NC impaired driving laws is an intentional act.

It’s also a serious criminal charge in North Carolina.

The first steps in preserving and making a claim for injuries

Focus on getting healthy.

The best legal advice we can give is this: Do not hesitate. Seek medical treatment without delay.

Your long-term health and medical well-being should be the first concern. Hiring a personal injury lawyer is secondary to obtaining timely medical diagnoses and treatment.

After a wreck, some people think, “I’ve got this. I really can’t go to the emergency room or doctor. I just don’t have the time.” While understandable, sometimes that makes the healing process worse.

No one really plans to be involved in an accident. We’re all busy.

The idea of missing work and important family commitments can make it hard to face a very tough reality: I’m hurt and this is going to take time to get over.

When we calculate fair compensation for damages after a wreck, we very much consider the pain and suffering encountered by clients. Damages are more than those to your car, which can be repaired or replaced – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

If you were hurt, we strongly recommend you seek immediate medical care. Prompt and appropriate treatment is likely to result in better long-term prognosis and recovery.

Insurance adjusters, seeking ways to limit the recovery, may call into question the causes of an injury. Delaying necessary treatment, especially for a significant period of time, may have legal consequences.

Documentation and preservation of a claim should also begin almost immediately. Part of what we do as personal injury attorneys includes gathering medical records, witness statements, and evidence of the accident.

That may also involve going to the scene of the wreck, taking pictures, and speaking with the officer responsible for writing the accident report.

Should I sign a release?

We recommend you not sign any legal document without first speaking with an attorney.

You should not give up any legal rights, especially if when you’re not feeling well or under the weather. Insurance adjusters are looking out for the carrier, not you if they’re pressing for a release – Danny Glover

That applies to a request for Medical Records or what may be called a Medical Authorization and Release.

Clearly, insurance companies and their adjusters want to get access to your medical history. That is not required under the NC insurance laws.

Even if medical records are ultimately part of a claim for damages, full access to your entire medical history is rarely appropriate.

Submitting documentation and proof of medical treatments demands attention to detail and a level of precision. Insurance companies should not be allowed to dive into unrelated medical issues or confidential medical records.

Do not execute (sign) ANY type of release or access to your confidential materials. If you have questions about signing a release, give Danny Glover a call.

Are legal consultations really free?

Yes. At our law office, we do NOT charge for legal consultations or to ask initial questions about your case.

Everything you tell us is highly confidential.

We strive to provide sound legal advice. Part of that includes determining whether a cause of action exists and helping a potential client to decide what is best for them and their family.

You will not be pressured to retain our firm for services. There is no clock running. We don’t charge hourly rates for accident cases.

Legal fees are earned on a contingency basis. Our law firm gets paid if we are able to obtain a settlement, verdict or award of damages. They set as a percentage of the recovery.

Give Danny Glover a call. It costs nothing to ask him some questions and see what he can do to help.

It’s our hope one of your New Year’s Resolutions for 2020 includes calling the Danny Glover Law Firm for your legal needs.

You may contact Danny Glover directly by email: Danny@DannyGloverLawFirm.com

Related Legal Issues

1. How Long Do I Have to File a Claim?
2. 7 Steps to Take After a Car Accident
3. Aggressive Driving
4. Dangers of Rural Roads
5. Distracted Driving
6. Drowsy Driving
7. Reckless Driving
8. NC Medical Board: Medical Records
9. New Year’s Resolutions: 20 Ideas for 2020

Med Pay is intended to pay for necessary and reasonable medical expenses.

It may also include terms of coverage for funeral expenses and the costs for treatment up to the policy limits. The most common amounts purchased in North Carolina tend to be in the range of $1,000 to $10,000.

Medical payment coverage in North Carolina can, therefore, serve as a helpful “first party insurance” coverage for immediate use in paying medical bills.

It’s a form of insurance coverage that works in addition to that available under the tortfeasor’s liability policy and your UM/UIM coverage.

Med Pay may also be available in instances where you are the passenger of a vehicle that has the policy coverage.

Med Pay is not required under the NC insurance laws. It is considered to be, “extra-contractual” or part of the contract between the insured and the insurance company.

That’s different from basic automobile policies, where “minimum liability” coverage is very much required and part of operating a vehicle in North Carolina.

North Carolina’s insurance laws often differ from those in other states.

For example, the State of Florida may require something similar called “PIP” coverage – Personal Injury Protection. South Carolina has its own form of personal injury protection as well.

If you are covered under Med Pay, it can be a valuable tool to help pay important, pending medical bills. Having said that, we believe it’s a good idea to talk to a lawyer before doing anything – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

Should I use Medical Payments or “Med Pay?”

Given North Carolina is a Contributory Negligence state, it’s understandable that some people are concerned with making a claim under their own automobile policy. That makes sense.

If you are not at fault for the wreck, why would you expect to make a claim under your policy? Clients ask, “Won’t that make my rates go up?”

Med Pay in North Carolina is not considered fault-based. Under the NC insurance laws, rates are not supposed to be increased when/if a claim is made under the Medical Payments provision of the insurance policy.

If that happens, either you or your personal injury lawyer can contact the North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance.

Med Pay coverage should be available for immediate reimbursement of medical bills. It can be applied to deductibles, co-pay, and balances for treatment “not covered” by your health insurance. Obviously, that applies too in instances when you do not have health insurance or major medical coverage or Obamacare.

As such, given many insurance liability companies refuse to “pay as you go,” meaning they prefer to work out a full and final settlement rather than pay bills as they come in, Med Pay can help pay bills until a settlement can be achieved.

Furthermore, given Medical Payments insurance is not fault-based, it provides coverage in the event contributory negligence is alleged and/or proven by the tortfeasor (the person who caused the wreck).

Should I give a statement to MY insurance company?

It happens so often that it has become standard, accepted language.

“You are required to give a statement. Failure to do so could result in denial of your claim.”

Frankly, it’s an effective tool for insurance adjusters.

We live in the South. People want to be helpful and cooperative.

They believe in doing right and fair play.

As such, when they make a claim for damages that have resulted from an at-fault wreck, they assume the insurance company proceeds with the same good faith and sense of fair dealing.

That is not always the case.

In North Carolina, you are NOT required to give any form of a statement to the insurance company who covers the person who caused the accident.

While the insurance laws may require some form of cooperation with YOUR carrier, that does not always include providing a statement, let alone a recorded statement.

Prior to doing anything, we recommend people speak with an experienced lawyer.

Our goal is to guide clients through the complexities of the NC insurance laws. We believe it’s smart to have legal counsel be the primary source of contact with carriers – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

Legal Topics of Interest

• 7 Steps to Take After a Car Accident
• Common Causes of Traffic Accidents
• Retaining a Personal Injury Lawyer
• Why was my Claim Denied?
• OBX Bike Accidents

It happens. . .a lot. Despite clear liability, insurance adjustors in North Carolina regularly deny valid claims.

There’s a reason for that: The NC insurance laws make it worthwhile to deny claims.

Insurance companies make money at the expense of others. They profit by paying less than they should. It’s extremely profitable to settle for less than what an insurance claim is worth. The highest profit margin involves denying the claim entirely.

Denying valid insurance claims is why accident lawyers have a job. If insurance companies paid like they should, we’d be out of business – Danny Glover, OBX Lawyer

The process of settling up for truck accidents, motorcycle wrecks, and even a simple car wreck in the Outer Banks is likely more complicated than you might realize. In part that’s because of things like contributory negligence laws and legal defenses such as last clear chance.

Denial of Benefits – Denial of Insurance Claims in NC

Make no mistake, the insurance lobby in North Carolina is powerful. For years they have attacked the jury system, making sure North Carolina is one of the very few states in the nation that still acknowledges contributory negligence rather than comparative negligence like South Carolina.

Who is Responsible for an Accident?

Plaintiffs lawyers aren’t allowed to mention the existence of car insurance during a trial. Even if the tort feasor (the person who caused the accident) was negligent, they still may allege you had the “last clear chance” to avoid the accident, once again shifting the burden from themselves.

Despite all the marketing you see on TV, insurance companies aren’t there to help you. They collect premiums and do everything they can to avoid paying claims. Mind you, that’s entirely legal. They are given tremendous protections under the insurance laws in North Carolina.

That doesn’t mean it’s right. Hard working folks in North Carolina want what is right, what is fair. Our clients are regularly shocked when we tell them how things are under the law – Danny Glover, Outer Banks Attorney

That doesn’t mean you don’t have legal rights. There may be legal options available. Even if the insurance adjuster has denied your valid claim for damages and injuries, we may be able to help.

Frankly, that’s one reason we have a system of justice in our country and North Carolina. The Founders of the United States understood how easy it is for powerful interests to take advantage of average people.

And that great equalizer is fundamental to our country as a whole. The last, best protection available against monied interests is the right to a Jury Trial.

When all else fails, we tell big insurance companies, “We’ll see you in court” and we mean it.

What is Contributory Negligence?

It sounds simple enough, maybe even a bit innocuous. Does it make sense that if you contributed 1% to your damages, you get nothing? That’s right, nothing. That’s contributory negligence in North Carolina.

No Such Thing as an Accident

Even if you did everything right, given the power of what happens under the law, it isn’t very hard to see why insurance adjusters might find a way to deny your claim.

It’s one reason why they want to get a recorded statement as soon as possible. It’s easy to twist your words. They’ll ask questions like:

• Were you speeding?
• Did you see the other vehicle?
• Were you 100% paying attention?
• Could you have slowed down a little bit?
• What other accidents have you been in?
• Do you have any pre-existing medical conditions?
• Had you been drinking, at all?
• Were you distracted, at all?
• Were there any kids in the car?
• Were you talking on your cell phone?
• Were you changing the station on your radio?
• Were you eating or had you just been through a drive-through?

All those questions are intended to catch you up, to somehow show you weren’t paying attention. Even if their “insured” caused the wreck, if the insurance comes up with something, almost anything to show you contributed to the accident or could have somehow anticipated the negligence of the at-fault party, you get nothing.

That’s contributory negligence. That’s why insurance companies deny claims. They pay nothing. You get zero.

Outer Banks Accident Lawyer – Danny Glover

Before you give up, it makes sense to talk to an accident attorney. It doesn’t cost anything to call our office, ask questions, and to see what we can do to help.

You may reach Danny Glover directly at Danny@DannyGloverLawFirm.com

Danny has more than 2 decades of experience helping people with motorcycle accidents, trucking accidents, and personal injury claims in northeastern North Carolina.

Not having enough accident insurance can present quite a problem. That is especially true if you are the one who caused the car accident (OBX lawyers call that “at fault” or “legal liability”) and are subject to claims for negligence in North Carolina.

While North Carolina requires insurance for vehicles on the roadways, mandating certain minimum levels of NC insurance coverage, there are times that level of protection just isn’t enough.

What happens then? What happens if there isn’t enough accident insurance after an OBX wreck? Who pays for your injuries?

It can get a bit confusing, but if you seek legal representation by an Outer Banks lawyer or Googled “Car Accident lawyers near me OBX,” our law firm may be able to help.

Personal injury cases can be a complicated when accident insurance becomes an issue. We may be able to find other insurance policies, levels of coverage, or even additional sources (or assets) from which to collect.” Danny Glover, OBX accident lawyer

What does “personally liable” mean? Does my accident insurance pay for my injuries or damages after a car wreck?

Normally, the person who caused the accident, whether it is a car accident, motorcycle accident, or even an OBX semi truck accident, is legally responsible for your losses. Those may include things like medical bills, lost wages, permanent injuries, and property damage to your vehicle.

READ MORE: 4 Ways Auto Insurance Can Increase

If the other person who caused the wreck bought the cheapest insurance out there, that may mean they have what experienced OBX personal injury lawyers call “minimum coverage.”

When found to be at fault (legally liable), and damages exceed the amount of available coverage, the insurance carrier may offer to “pay the policy limits.”

If your damages after a car accident exceed the policy limits (the amount of insurance they have), then the person who is at fault for the car accident and legally responsible for the resulting personal injury, may also personally liable for any amount over the policy limits.

Put simply, if someone doesn’t have enough insurance after a North Carolina accident, whether if they are from out-of-state and you live on the Outer Banks NC, they could be required to pay you back out of their own pocket.

That’s true too if you were the one visiting Nags Head, Manteo, or Kill Devil Hills on vacation and were injured in a car accident by someone who lives in OBX NC.

In the instance where there is not enough insurance, that may also trigger something on your insurance policy called UIM which stands for Under Insurance Motorist protection. Experienced OBX lawyers are used to working with UM / UIM insurance and accident claims in North Carolina.

UM accident insurance refers to cases where the “at fault” driver had no insurance at all. UM stands for UN-insured motorist accident insurance in NC.

That does NOT mean the at fault driver is not still personally liable for the car accident. Just like before, if someone else caused the accident and is found to be legally negligent and therefore liable, they could owe the entire amount for your injuries and damages.

The big question then becomes: Do they have the money to pay for your losses after an OBX car accident?

READ MORE: What Insurance Should You Use?

While it’s possible someone may have simply forgotten to pay their car accident insurance policy, resulting in a lapse and therefore no coverage (UM claims), all-too-often the reason the car insurance lapses is because they didn’t have money in the first place.

Sometimes it’s true: “You can’t bet blood from a stone.” Obtaining a judgment for money damages after an OBX accident lawsuit is not the same as collecting on those damages. That’s when UM or UIM insurance in North Carolina can be so incredibly valuable. . .and important to your long-term well being after an NC accident.

The potentially good news is that your auto insurance policy on your vehicle may be an avenue for money damages after an accident. You may be able to make a claim under either your UM or UIM policy when the “at fault driver” either did not have insurance or did not have enough car accident insurance.

If you have questions about all this, OBX lawyer Danny Glover is available for consultation. With more than 26 years helping people on the Outer Banks in places like Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head NC, Manteo, Buxton, and Ocracoke, North Carolina, our OBX law firm is here to serve you.

Now is the time to call our Danny Glover OBX attorney.

We provide free consultation to people hurt in OBX car accidents. We’re used to dealing with accident insurance legal issues with people who may be visitors to the Outer Banks hurt in accidents. Danny Glover, Car Accident Lawyer

What do I pay after an accident? What does my accident insurance cover? What if I caused the accident?

Your insurance does not determine how much you owe somebody.

Your insurance coverage amounts simply tell you how much of that amount your insurance company is going to pay, so when you owe someone more money than your insurance coverage, that’s called an access judgment, and you are personally responsible for the amount that you owe after your insurance pays its limits.

CALL NOW 252-299-5300 for Free Consultation

If you were injured due to the criminal negligence due to DUI OBX or drunk driving in North Carolina or DWI charges Outer Banks NC, we’re here to help.

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If you were involved in an “accident” in North Carolina, normally that is the state where a legal claim for damages would be made. While there are certain exceptions, a good general rule of thumb is this:

If you were injured in North Carolina, you bring legal claims or file suit in North Carolina. It does not matter where you are from or even if you are resident or citizen of another state.

We see a lot of visitors from Virginia, South Carolina, and even Washington, D.C. to the Outer Bank. And with the increased amount of travelers on the roadways comes an increased number of OBX car wrecks – Danny Glover, NC Injury Attorney

Pasquotank County NC Car Crash Statistics – Traffic Fatalities

• 2011 – 8 Motorists Killed
• 2012 – 3
• 2013 – 0
• 2014 – 3
• 2015 – 4

Over a 10 Year Average, there have been 4 Traffic Related Fatalities in Pasquotank County, NC. Five or more people are killed on the roadways of Dare County, North Carolina on an annual basis.

NC DOT 2016 Traffic Crash Facts

What type of legal cases do you handle? Can you help someone from Virginia who was hurt in North Carolina? If I live in another state, Can I sue for an out of state accident?

Our law firms provides legal representation for:

• Car Crash – Auto “Accidents”
• MVA Motor Vehicle Accidents
• Semi Truck – Trucking Accidents
• Wrongful Death Claims
• Serious Bodily Injury Legal Matters
• Traumatic Brain Injury TBI
• Catastrophic Losses
• Spinal Cord Injuries
• Motorcycle Accidents
• Boating Accidents
• Cycling Accidents

Indeed, it just makes sense to seek legal representation from a lawyer and law firm where the accident took place. It doesn’t matter if you live in another state. Any claims for damages from an accident in Elizabeth City, Winfall, or Edenton, North Carolina would be subject to North Carolina personal injury laws.

Danny Glover Attorney: Verdicts and Settlements Info

The law that applies to a wreck is the law of the location of the wreck. If that is in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, you’ll want to speak with an Outer Banks lawyer – Danny Glover

READ MORE: Who Is Liable In The Event of a Wreck?

That means North Carolina law is going to apply to a wreck in Elizabeth City, Carolla, Duck, and Kitty Hawk accident cases. It doesn’t matter if you live in Virginia, or Kalamazoo, Michigan, or Alaska.

Why do you say, “There is no such thing as an accident?”

While people often refer to car wrecks as “accidents,” in the truest sense of the word, it was no “accident.” Sometimes we all use euphemisms to get through talking about a difficult subject. Insurance companies use words like “accident” or “soft tissue injuries” and “fender-bender” to describe what can be very serious, long-term personal injuries and life-changing medical conditions.

Insurance companies do that to make your injuries seem inconsequential or less-serious than they actually may be. It’s a way to limit damages. And while a creative use words, the ultimate goal of NC insurance adjustors is to limit, if not eliminate the possibility of paying money damages after a car crash.

You generally aren’t going to see “fender bender” cases in court, at least in cases where there is an experienced Outer Banks Personal Injury Attorney involved.

The cases we handle involve real people with real injuries who have been hurt because of real negligence. We don’t have time to waste bringing frivolous lawsuits or legal claims. We are all-too-often forced to file lawsuits in North Carolina because the adjustor just will not pay what is either fair or appropriate given the long-term, if not permanent injuries after car “accidents” – Danny Glover, Elizabeth City NC Lawyer

LEARN MORE: How is liable for NC accident cases?

Lawyers in court do their best to use simple, accurate words. It wasn’t an “accident,” it was a car wreck or collision caused by the negligence of another. The person who caused the wreck failed to do something. It could be as simple as not exercising due care and circumspection for the existing traffic conditions or weather. They may have failed to keep a proper lookout or stopping distance.

In some Eastern NC wrecks, the person responsible for damages may have be careless, whether or not they were formally charged with careless and reckless driving in NC. Chances are, if you find yourself in need of legal representation due to an “accident” someone else caused and through no fault of you own, they failed to follow the NC Traffic laws.

It isn’t an “accident” when you don’t follow the rules. You made a decision. Whether it was speeding over the limit or even drunk driving, you made a choice. And as a result of that choice, or what plaintiff’s lawyers may refer to as the direct and proximate cause, you were injured.

So while we may use the terms interchangeably because it may be easier to explain a difficult subject, the truth of the matter is this: There is no such thing as an accident. Someone caused your injuries.

And if that is the case, if you were injured in Elizabeth City or Kitty Hawk NC or Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, our law office is here to help. So, you need an attorney in Elizabeth City to handle an Elizabeth City car wreck.

MORE INFO: 7 Steps to Take Before Calling an Accident Lawyer

FOR FREE CONSULTATION Dial: (252)-299-5300 Call OBX Accident Lawyer Danny Glover Jr NOW

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One of the more immediate concerns after an Outer Banks car accident is dealing with getting your car repaired. Even with a rental, which may be an option in some instances, it takes time to review the damages and schedule work to be performed. It also may take more than one shop, especially if there is substantial frame damage, bodywork, and the need for painting.

While a lot of focus is understandably placed on personal injuries, medical care, and outstanding medical bills, lawyers also provide legal representation for property damages, vehicle repair, valuation of the loss, and depreciation after a wreck.

Property damage after an car accident is an important aspect of the case legal presentation. Indeed, it often proves to be one of the more immediate needs of our clients. It’s also regularly a source for contention, as accident insurance companies often don’t want to pay the fair market value – Danny Glover, OBX lawyer

A lot depends on the nature and extent of the wreck. What type of vehicles were involved? Was is 18 wheeler vs car? UPS truck vs mini-van? Pickup truck vs Honda Prius? SUV vs motorcycle?

To some extent, it comes down to physics, the weight of the respective vehicles, the speed at impact, and whether any effort was made prior to the collision to change direction or stop prior to the accident. Vehicle damages can be complicated. Part of the calculation for damages also includes the make and year of your car. Older model vehicles depreciate over time and may be difficult to fix if parts are unavailable.

Who Is Liable For Accident Injuries?

It’s also relevant for the insurance defense attorney to deduct from the value “high mileage” and prior damages. And as a result, the type of vehicles involved in the OBX car accident (or motorcycle accident) is as important as how your car or motorcycle was damaged as a result of a traffic “accident.”

While it may be common for defense lawyers to use the term “car accident,” there really is no such thing as an accident. If you were injured as a result of negligence, that was not an accident. A decision was made, whether it be to not follow the NC traffic laws or the failure to operate a vehicle in both a safe and lawful manner.

Motorcycle wrecks are often a total loss. It doesn’t take much impact to completely destroy a motorcycle. There is an inverse relationship with motorcycle accidents in the Outer Banks NC. The property damages tend to be lower, because motorcycles aren’t as expensive as most cars. But the personal injury claims are substantially higher, because the person on the motorcycle has nowhere near the same protection as a car accident – Danny Glover, OBX motorcycle accident lawyer

Damages after a car accident involve more than exterior repairs

The way cars are designed and built nowadays sometimes disguise the true nature and extent of vehicle damages. Back in the 1950’s American cars dominated the roadways and everything was fabricated out out steel. If you crumpled a bumper back then, it wasn’t hard to imagine the level of impact.

You could look at a quarter-panel or smashed front-end and understand the relationship between vehicle speeds and the mass of vehicles in a car accident case.

Vehicles today are built with ultra-light and resilient materials. Indeed, some very smart engineers have learned to transfer and distribute loads associated with the force of impact after a car accident. An exterior bumper might “pop back out” with a minimal amount of work, disguising substantial vehicle damages to energy absorbers and brackets.

Under United States Federal Automotive Laws 49 CFR Part 581 a “Bumper Standard” was put into place to limit exterior damages at barrier impact speeds. Hidden under the exterior (attached to both front and back bumpers) of most newer-model vehicles are compressible, accordion-like rubber compression modules.

In inspecting for vehicle damages after a car accident, it’s important to look for telltale signs of the impact such as missing or cracked plastic facia. That often means putting your car on a lift and completing a visual inspection of the hidden areas of the car. It also may mean removing the bumpers and looking for damage to the energy absorbers and even to the frame of the vehicle.

If a frame is bent after a car accident, which is relatively common after semi truck accidents and large vehicle vs small vehicle collisions, very little can be done to repair the car. Contrary to what an insurance adjuster may tell you, vehicles with a bent frame will never ride the same, they’ll be subject to a host of consistent repair issues, and should in most instances be declared a “total loss” or “totaled.”

Am I required to get my car fixed after an OBX car accident?

You’re entitled to the full value of damages, which means either the total loss amount or the amount that it would cost to repair the vehicle, but it’s your car, and you’re not required to get it fixed if you don’t want to.

CALL NOW FOR FREE CASE EVALUATION 252-299-5300

Will insurance require my car to be repaired in NC? 1705z18

I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with Scott Neal, my friend, and host of The Imperfect Leader Podcast.

Thanks first to Steve for the opportunity and for his gracious, kind spirit. I really enjoy talking to people about the law and what I’ve learned after more than two decades of courtroom experience.

DOWNLOAD PODCAST HERE

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like being a lawyer, I think you’ll enjoy listening to this episode on Steve’s podcast.

We discuss a wide range of topics, including becoming a lawyer, the business of law, representing clients, and managing a law practice in North Carolina.

Feel free to contact me at: Danny Glover Law Firm

For additional information, check out my other blogs posts:

7 Questions to Ask Your Criminal Defense Lawyer Before Hiring

What can a Criminal Defense Lawyer Do for You?

Who is Responsible for a Wreck in NC?

What to do right after an Accident in North Carolina

Announcer: You are listening to The Imperfect Leader Podcast with Scott Neal, a podcast to help you lead and grow, even with imperfections and challenges. Now here’s your host, Scott Neal.

Scott Neal: All right, welcome to The Imperfect Leader Podcast. I’m Scott Neal, your host. And today, I’ve got Danny Glover with us. Danny is a well-known attorney here in our city, Elizabeth City North Carolina, and really honored to have Danny with us today.

Scott Neal: We’re gonna jump right into our interview with Danny. And I want you to get to know him, and excited about a few of the questions I’m gonna ask him, and where we go on this journey of this podcast today.

Scott Neal: Hey Danny. Welcome to the podcast. Glad you’re here.

Danny Glover: Well thank you. I was very honored to be asked until just now, I heard it was called The Imperfect Leader, so I’m a little conflicted at this point.

Scott Neal: Sorry. Well, I’m the only imperfect leader here. So it’s my show, so I figured I better be honest about it.

Scott Neal: Hey Danny, tell us a little bit about yourself, ’cause I’m sure there are many people listening who have no idea who you are, and they’d like to get to know you, just the personal side. And then we’re gonna jump into some professional questions as well. So tell us a little bit about your family, maybe how long you’ve been practicing law, and maybe what area of law do you specialize?

Danny Glover: All right. Well, I am the husband of Meredith Glover, and the father of three kids, Linc, who is at East Carolina now, Rebecca, who is a junior at the School of Science and Math, and actually is part of the worship team here. And then Dillon is an 8th grader at Victory-

Scott Neal: Awesome.

Danny Glover: … south of town.

Scott Neal: Right.

Danny Glover: I have been in Elizabeth City part of 1994, and then full-time since 1995, when Meredith and I got married and moved here. And we’ve been here ever since.

Scott Neal: Yeah. Now what kind of law do you specialize in? I know it’s a variety of different things, but what’s one area especially?

Danny Glover: I do serious personal injury cases, where people are hurt badly enough to need surgery, permanent injuries, life care plans, future care, that kind of thing.

Scott Neal: You mentioned how long you’ve been here. How long, you may have already answered this, but let me ask again. How long have you been practicing law?

Danny Glover: I’ve been practicing law since 1995, when I graduated from the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law.

Scott Neal: Okay. Did you always want to become an attorney? Was that something you had when you were a kid, just this dream to become an attorney? Or how did that work out? Talk us through a little bit of that.

Danny Glover: Well, it’s not really all that inspiring or insightful, because I frankly don’t remember when I decided to become an attorney. I seem to recall having some thoughts in high school about wanting to become an accountant. But as I got into college and started, I was a business major and a speech minor. And just decided that crunching numbers all day was not going to fulfill me. And I consider myself a problem solver, and a helper, and at some point realized that law was a good way to put both of those into practice.

Scott Neal: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I’m ignorant when it comes to all the different facets of being a lawyer. I assume when you go to school you get a pretty wide spectrum of law, and then you eventually make a decision on kinda the direction you’re gonna go, and kind of specialize in an area. Is that how that works?

Danny Glover: Well, you are taught for three years in law school in a wide variety, mainly using the Socratic method, which is where the professor simply asks questions, and then critiques your answer, criticizes you, has other students do the same, but gives you basically a fact pattern, and then you have to figure out how the law would apply to those facts. And so it’s not sitting down reading, memorization, things like that.

Danny Glover: A lot of my classmates figured out during law school what kind of law they wanted to practice. But frankly, the majority of us, it was controlled by the hiring environment and the economy, and so unless you were an elite student, which I certainly was not, you took what job you could get basically.

Scott Neal: Okay.

Danny Glover: And it just so happened that mine ended up being with a lawyer here in Elizabeth City who practiced primarily criminal defense and personal injury. So that’s what I’ve been doing for decades now, is criminal defense, serious personal injury, and in the last few years, sort of evolved into a residential construction dispute litigator.

Scott Neal: Okay. What would you say if maybe we had a few young college kids here, and they’re considering going into law, and you could look at them, kinda like you were when you first started out. What are maybe a few things you would say to them, maybe in wisdom, guidance, direction, about here are a few things I want you to know. I wish I knew this when I was in school.

Danny Glover: Right.

Scott Neal: What would be a couple of those things?

Danny Glover: Well, the first thing I would say is don’t do it.

Scott Neal: Okay. Well that’s odd.

Danny Glover: The job market in North Carolina, especially, has become oversaturated with lawyers. Recently, the Charlotte School of Law was shut down for accrediting, and perhaps some tuition fraud issues. But they were pumping out 700 plus law students a year.

Scott Neal: Wow.

Danny Glover: The ELAN recently opened a law school a few years ago. They’re pumping out lawyers. Then you’ve got Central, in Durham, Duke, Wake, UNC, and so there are just more law graduates coming out than the job market can possibly handle.

Scott Neal: Now, is that unique to North Carolina, or is that our nation pretty much?

Danny Glover: I can’t answer that. All in know is North Carolina. But I know that it is a huge problem here, where law students are now coming out of law schools, state law schools, or private law schools here in North Carolina with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, and they’re being forced to take jobs that might pay them 20 or 30 thousand dollars a year. It’s tough for them to cashflow their school debt, much less their ordinary living expenses, or trying to raise a family, or things like that. So it is reaching a crisis level, frankly, in North Carolina.

Danny Glover: Now, when I graduated, it wasn’t that bad, because law school might’ve been five to six thousand dollars a semester. And so you could come out, if you had to borrow everything, you’d come out with less than $50,000 of debt. But that’s not the case now, even with the state schools.

Scott Neal: Right. Well, today you own your own business. And that, I’m sure, is somewhat exciting, and also challenging. So what would you say to a few, ’cause I know there are people listening to this who are thinking about opening up a business. I meet people here in our church. I meet people throughout our city wanting to either start a restaurant or wanting to open up any private business. What are a few suggestions you’ve learned over the last few years about opening up your own practice, that you could share with a few young people or older people who are just starting to think about owning their own?

Danny Glover: Well I think having a real solid plan, a detailed plan, is essential. I was fortunate when I opened my business last year, that I had been here for decades, had a lot of contacts, had a lot of existing clients that transitioned with me to my new firm. So my supply side, or my demand side rather, was already in place, basically. But I see a lot of business owners get into trouble when they have a good idea, they may be very good at executing it. But they’ve not thought through all of the expenses, all the cash flow issues, all of the contingencies that are gonna happen, even with the best planning.

Danny Glover: So they don’t have a plan to account for those kinda things. And so they start up, and they’re doing what they always wanted to do, and three or four months later, they realize they don’t have the money to continue.

Scott Neal: Right.

Danny Glover: So that’s the biggest thing I would say is you’ve got to sit down, and if you’ve not been in the business before … In my old firm, I did most of the administrative stuff, so I knew what all of the different aspects of a law firm cost, from online legal research, to the insurance, to payroll, to health insurance. I already knew all of that, so it was easy for me to sit down and budget for those things.

Scott Neal: Yeah. You were walking with your eyes open. You knew what was happening.

Danny Glover: Yes. I did.

Scott Neal: You knew what to expect.

Danny Glover: I did. Still scary.

Scott Neal: Sure.

Danny Glover: Still very, very different. I came and joined a, my former partner had already been in Elizabeth City for 20 something years before I was here. He already had a very successful practice. So I was very fortunate that I was able to step into a successful practice and sort of grow up in that. But if you’re starting in a brand new business that you’ve never done before, I think it’s essential that you talk to others who have, and plan out everything you can think of, worst cast scenarios.

Scott Neal: And if you’re not financially or business minded, find someone who is.

Danny Glover: You have to, because when you go into business, it’s the business that matters.

Scott Neal: That’s right. Yeah.

Danny Glover: It’s the business that will put you out if you-

Scott Neal: Right. I think a lot of people walk in thinking, “Well, I’ve got a great product, and I’m a hard worker. So all I gotta do is put a for sale sign on whatever it is I’m selling, and everybody will just come to me, and it’ll be successful.” But that’s not true. You’ve gotta find some people who’ve got a good business sense who can help you put a plan together, because often people spend all their profits, and they don’t have anything to take them to the next month, or on to the rest of the year. So that’s good.

Danny Glover: Especially self starters who have some cash, and don’t need the bank’s involvement. I’ve seen, over the years, that even though borrowing, I’m totally against borrowing. But when you deal with the bank, they will require that kind of planning, and the business plan, the business model, the budgeting. But a lot of the failures that I see are people who didn’t have to deal with the bank, and they didn’t have that guidance and that structure in place, like a business loan would’ve done.

Scott Neal: Right. Well Danny, a lot of people, no doubt, see attorneys on TV. They watch attorneys in movies. They have a perception of what it means to be an attorney, out there battling the bad guys, or winning it for the good guys, or whatever. What are a few maybe common myths about being an attorney that the average person may not know. I’m sure your day is not filled with excitement all the time. So tell us a little about kinda the reality. What’s behind the scenes there of being an attorney every day?

Danny Glover: Sure. I hear young people come to me and say, “You know, I think I wanna be a lawyer, because I’m really good at arguing. I’m really good at arguing.” And frankly, doing the kind of law that I do, it’s agreement making, and it’s consensus building. I’m trying to reach reasonable fair settlements with insurance companies. Now, sometimes we have to fight to get to that point of agreement. But that’s my goal is to reach an agreement, and if they won’t agree, then to take it to a jury and allow the jury to agree with my client.

Danny Glover: Same in criminal defense. When 95% of all cases settle, and only 5% actually go to trial, and I think that’s a pretty fair estimate. That’s a lot of agreements.

Scott Neal: Sure is.

Danny Glover: And you have to have the relationships with the prosecutors, with the law enforcement officers, with the judges, so that there’s trust, so that there’s respect. Oftentimes, criminal defense attorneys have to point out to an officer or to a prosecutor the mistakes the officer made during the process, because it’s those mistakes that are the loophole of the technicalities that people talk about all the time.

Danny Glover: And so you have to be able to do that in such a way that the officer’s not gonna get mad, hold it against you later, hold it against your client now. So it really is, there really is a skill to getting people to agree when the agreement is based upon someone’s failure, either my client’s failure for getting in, that led him or her to get into trouble, the officer’s failure in doing exactly what he or she was trained to do during the arrest process, the prosecutor’s failure in not securing a witness or some evidence that they should have. Any number of things.

Scott Neal: Yeah.

Danny Glover: But that’s the basis of these agreements. And it takes some, there’s some delicacy involved in doing that without bruising egos and blowing the deal up.

Scott Neal: Right. So a lot of negotiating, a lot of relationship building. I think that is definitely a surprise that a lot of people might not know about, being an attorney. It’s building relationships with the people in the city, everybody involved, and just, like you said at the beginning, trust, building this trust, level of trust with people. Interesting.

Danny Glover: Yeah. It is. And I’m fortunate on the criminal side of my practice, our elected District Attorney, Andy Wamble, Andy and I went to law school together, and played intramurals against each other in law school, back when we were babies. So just through sheer luck, I happen to a law school classmate with our elected District Attorney, which is nice.

Scott Neal: Sure.

Danny Glover: It’s nice.

Scott Neal: That’s great. What do you love most about what you do? What is it that kinda gets you up and keeps you going, and this would be an awesome day if this occurs, when this occurs, just some of the things you love most.

Danny Glover: I am a competitor-

Scott Neal: Okay.

Danny Glover: … to the worst possible degree.

Scott Neal: Yeah.

Danny Glover: It’s actually a problem. And every case I have is a competition with somebody, either the other attorney or the insurance company, or the government in the criminal prosecutions. And so even when we have to settle, even when we have to reach a plea bargain, the whole build up to that is a competition. Can I outwork them? Can I outthink them? Can I outmaneuver them? Any number of things that I’m trying to do, all of which benefit my client.

Scott Neal: Sure. So that would be true of any attorney really. Again, if someone’s out there thinking about going into law, you’ve got to have this competitive edge to yourself. Wouldn’t you agree? You gotta love that.

Danny Glover: Well you do, because getting into law school itself if highly competitive. And then surviving in law school, especially the first year is highly competitive. Once you graduate, there are some areas of the law where you don’t have to be hyper-competitive. There are transactional lawyers who simply draft deeds or wills all day. And they’re not trying to beat any other side. They’re not trying to win. They’re just trying to get down on paper what their client wants, and what’s best for their client.

Danny Glover: Judges, they’re not competing with anyone. They’re the master.

Scott Neal: Right.

Danny Glover: And so what they say goes. And it’s a difficult job, no doubt, but it’s not the competitive job that being on one side of the litigation is.

Scott Neal: So if you do not enjoy competition, then getting in there and fighting it is not the area you wanna go into for your career.

Danny Glover: It’s very tough to be a successful attorney and to be a passive, non-competitive person.

Scott Neal: Sure. Well, the flip side of that question. What are a few of the things you find most challenging about what you do, some of the things you just don’t really enjoy. You gotta do it, but it’s just not something that gives you a lot of energy.

Danny Glover: Well, we don’t win every case.

Scott Neal: Right. Sure.

Danny Glover: So losing is not high up on the enjoyment factor. I think dealing with egos is one of the more challenging part. And I’ll put my ego right up there at the top of the list. I take every case thinking I’m gonna win it, and at some point, there’s a realization that I’m not gonna win this case, or I’m not gonna get my client exactly what they want. So you have to, you have to put that aside to continue to do what’s best for your client.

Danny Glover: Managing your client’s expectations is very, very difficult, especially when the more successful attorneys charge more, and when you charge more, and the client is paying more, the client expects more. And so, that becomes difficult. Why did I hire you? I could’ve achieved that myself. And so that’s a challenge.

Danny Glover: Dealing with different judges’ rules and quirks is a challenge. The personality of the judge, the belief system of the judge, the rules of the judge may vary from day to day, from judge to judge. And so, one client with a case, and another client with an identical case but a different judge, may see two entirely different processes, two entirely different outcomes. And so that becomes difficult.

Scott Neal: So this my go, not need to be said, but I’m curious. I assume, based on what you just said, that depending on the judge, you prepare differently.

Danny Glover: Absolutely.

Scott Neal: Okay, because you know going into this case, with this particular judge, these are certain things important to him or her. These are certain things he or she will maybe lean one way or the other. Is that accurate?

Danny Glover: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things that a lot of clients don’t understand. And with the economy the way it’s been lately, and the competitive environment in the legal field, attorneys are doing more than they used to. They’re traveling further than they used to. And so I have attorneys from Charlotte and Richmond advertising as Elizabeth City personal injury lawyers. I have attorneys from Raleigh trying to get Elizabeth City DWIs. Well those out of town attorneys don’t know the first thing about our judges. They don’t know our prosecutors. They don’t know our law enforcement officers.

Danny Glover: And I don’t think the clients understand exactly how important it is that you know-

Scott Neal: Well I had no idea. It’s new to me.

Danny Glover: Yeah.

Scott Neal: I would have no clue about that. So that’s good to know.

Danny Glover: So the biggest advice I would give is find a competent, well-respected, local lawyer.

Scott Neal: Right.

Danny Glover: You know, boots on the ground.

Scott Neal: So if a person’s listening to this and they, you know, obviously live in a different city, or they’re going, maybe traveling through that particular county, or whatever, get pulled over for a speeding ticket, gonna have to appear in court in that particular county, you would recommend they find someone there to represent them, if they need to do that.

Danny Glover: Absolutely. Or they call me, and I’ll find them.

Scott Neal: Okay.

Danny Glover: I’m huge into networking across the state. I have spent my entire legal career working in an organization called the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, which is basically the statewide trial lawyers organization of about 3,000 members statewide, doing all sorts of legal work, on the litigation side, representing injured people, representing the accused, worker’s comp, things like that.

Danny Glover: Went up through the ranks and was president of that organization in 2014. So I know how important it is to know attorneys all across the state. ‘Cause you don’t want me representing you in Rocky Mount.

Scott Neal: Sure.

Danny Glover: I don’t know the first thing about Rocky Mount. I know-

Scott Neal: It’s very interesting, ’cause I know anytime we’ve got a, unfortunately, would get pulled over, or get a speeding ticket, we get a flood of attorney letters at our house.

Danny Glover: I hate it.

Scott Neal: We have three kids, and we’ve got all these cars everywhere, and my kids live in different places. So if they get a ticket, wow, we get 15 different letters probably at our house. And I had no idea. I figure well, just pick one of them and if you need an attorney, they’re all the same. But that’s not true.

Danny Glover: Well, it’s not. And I hate those letters. I don’t send them, and if I have anything to do with it, I never will. But that’s part of the economics of our profession is people feel the need to do that.

Scott Neal: Sure.

Danny Glover: I’ll tell on her. My wife was one of my first clients at my new law firm-

Scott Neal: Oh yeah?

Danny Glover: … when she was late to work one day, and we got a flood of those letters, from my friends and colleagues.

Danny Glover: The tickets and the charges are public record, and you can actually subscribe to services that every morning they will send you a mail ready list of the people who got recent charges, and you just put a stamp on an envelope and send it out, and you don’t even look at it, or look at what it’s about. You just send them.

Scott Neal: Yeah. Well, it happened to us a little while back, and I got a bunch of them. So I was curious how all that worked.

Scott Neal: Well, here we are in Elizabeth City, which is a relatively small town. How do you stay current in a town like Elizabeth City? I’ve noticed recently, you have … Now, this may only because I’m more aware of it, but it seems like you have more blogs. You have some more things you’re writing, posting in social media. I’ve seen some things in Facebook and different places.

Scott Neal: I assume that’s intentional, in order to kinda keep your face in front of the people here in our town, and because of all those competition. Just give us a little rundown on that.

Danny Glover: Well, that’s obviously marketing.

Scott Neal: Right.

Danny Glover: It’s also very informative.

Scott Neal: It is. I’ve read several of the blogs. Very helpful actually.

Danny Glover: Yeah. And so, over the years, advertising in the legal profession has been problematic within the legal profession. The state bar has a ton of ethics rules about how you can and cannot advertise, and the kind of superlatives you can use when describing yourself or your practice.

Danny Glover: But TV advertising used to be the thing. For the attorneys who were gonna advertise, it was either gonna be billboards or TV. Well, TV’s really expensive, and TV is limited to this local area. And so, we’re in a tourist area, so we have people from Canada come to the Outer Banks. We have people from Nebraska come to the Outer Banks. If I advertise on TV, they’re not gonna see that.

Danny Glover: The internet is worldwide. So I get a lot of business off of the internet, and Facebook, and other social media, where those blogs are also syndicated and posted. But instead of just throwing my name out there, throwing my face out there, I think people are interested in reading short little legal tidbits. I get asked more about those than anything else I’ve ever done in terms of marketing or advertising. And it’s fun.

Danny Glover: I’ve got a buddy in Charlotte who does all my video work. So we go to his studio, and he interviews me for hours and hours and hours, and then he chops those up into little bitty 20, 30 second interviews. Then he does the animated stuff as well.

Scott Neal: Yeah. Well they’re helpful. And I find it interesting, ’cause obviously, you live in that world, so you know the lingo. You know, obviously, the laws, and what the rights of the person. But the average guy, like myself, I don’t know what I can do, can’t do, what’s right if a police officer pulls me over, what I can expect, what maybe is requested of me that I don’t necessarily have to do. So I find those little tidbits of information very helpful. In fact, I’d like to, for you to give us maybe a little taste of that.

Danny Glover: Sure.

Scott Neal: If the average person’s pulled over, whether it’s a, whether it’s a check … I don’t know what that’s called, when they’re doing a random check, just to see, I guess, if they’re trying to find someone who may be drinking and driving, or DUI testing and things. What are some of the rights that a person has that they may not know they have.

Scott Neal: I think it’s very intimidating. If you’re not in the legal field, you see the lights behind you. You get pulled over. Whatever the officer asks you to do, you do it, because you don’t wanna make it worse. And the average person just doesn’t know his or her rights.

Danny Glover: Right.

Scott Neal: So give us a little rundown, just a few of those things that might be helpful.

Danny Glover: Sure. Sure. And before I start, the preface to all of this is this is not about being dishonest or trying to trick the system, or trick the law enforcement officers.

Scott Neal: Sure.

Danny Glover: I have some very, very good friends who are law enforcement officers, and across the board, our law enforcement officers here do a great job. For years, I was the local Fraternal Order of Police attorney, and the Highway Patrol attorney here, and so …

Danny Glover: That does not eliminate the fact, though, that we have very important individual rights in America, and we should not be afraid of exercising them, and certainly should not be ignorant of them. But I think the most important right, on the criminal side, is the right to remain silent, and the right to say no.

Danny Glover: If an officer asks, “Can I search your car? Can I pat you down? Can I search your house?” You have every right to say no. That doesn’t mean you’re gonna stop the officer from doing it if that’s what he or she wants to do, but when you say no, and they do it anyway, and then you end up getting charged, and you go to court, then the burden’s on the officer to prove that they had probably cause to do that. Whereas if you say, “Yeah. Sure. I just wanna cooperate,” they don’t need probably cause. Your consent eliminates a lot of the defenses that you or your lawyer might have to helping your case.

Danny Glover: You don’t ever have to answer questions under any circumstances. And what a lot of people don’t realize is law enforcement officers have the ability, and oftentimes the right to misstate what’s going on to you, or to lead you to believe one thing, when that may or may not be true, and to put pressure on you to incriminate yourself, to confess, to tell on someone else, perhaps, to identify the location, perhaps, of something you shouldn’t have. And so that’s why it’s important that a person understand they don’t ever have to answer those questions, and it’s completely legal, and it is completely permissible, and it will not make the situation worse, if you simply say, “Thank you officer, but I’d rather not answer your questions.”

Scott Neal: That’s very interesting. So is that one of the reasons a police officer will ask, when you’re pulled over, “Do you have any idea why I pulled you over?”

Scott Neal: The reason I ask that is because I’ve talked with some people who, they had a registration that was expired, or they had something else with their car, and they just kinda admitted that in, “Do you have any idea why I pulled you over?” “Well, because my registration’s out,” which clued the officer into “I better check their tag,” when it was really, they didn’t give a turn signal, or they were speeding.

Scott Neal: I’m just wondering if that’s not kind of a baiting to get you to tell them more than what even they may know.

Danny Glover: Well, it’s that, and it’s to get you to confess to what they do know-

Scott Neal: Okay.

Danny Glover: … so that they don’t have to prove it.

Scott Neal: Got it.

Danny Glover: Certain things you are required to have been notified about, such as the revocation of a driver’s license. You know, now a common law enforcement technique is to follow you down the road with their laptop open, and they’re keying in your license plate. They’re seeing the status of your insurance, the status of your tags, who the owner is, whether that person has a valid license, and using any of that information to pull you over, maybe for those reasons, maybe to go on a fishing expedition for something else. Especially in certain parts of the state, if you meet certain racial profiles or other stereotypes.

Danny Glover: When you admit to knowing that your license was revoked, well now in court it’s real easy for them to prove that, instead of having to contact DMV, get a copy of the certified letter, whatever it is they got to do. I think it’s two-fold, the reason they ask that specific question.

Scott Neal: Yeah. That’s very interesting. I know I don’t know what I can do and can’t do. I think most of the time you’re just trying to comply and make the situation worse. There’s a level of nervousness there when someone obviously pulls you over and they’re the one in authority. I think that’s good, that’s why I enjoy those little tidbits of truth you put on Facebook.

Danny Glover: Well and on the injury side, I think there’s even more abuse of people and their … Not necessarily their rights because your constitutional rights and protections typically help you avoid prosecution, but insurance companies are in it to make a profit, and every dollar they can save on your claim is a dollar extra profit to them. They have highly specialized, highly trained adjusters to get you on the phone immediately after you’ve been hurt to try to use against you later to save a dollar. A lot of injuries don’t appear within a day of the wreck or at the scene of the wreck. So you might say, “Well I only …” They may say, “Tell me everything that you hurt.” You say, “Well I only hurt my knee.” Well lo and behold, you’ve got a blown disk in your back that you didn’t realize is from this wreck and you end up with two surgeries later.

Danny Glover: Then you try to make a claim for the back, and they play this recorded statement that, “Well you told us you only hurt your knee.” So I think it’s important that people understand that they should not be talking to an insurance company before or without a lawyer, because people who don’t work in that field day in and day out don’t see the big picture of where this thing is headed, and so they oftentimes shortchange themselves.

Scott Neal: So someone falls at work, they get an injury, I would assume if it’s filed a certain way they’re going to kind of get some of the letters sent, like you do if you get a speeding ticket, people are going, “Hey, let me help you. Let me help you.” The insurance company’s going to want to, you said highly trained people are going to call this person. The average person has no idea what’s going on, they’re just trying to be honest and answer questions. Your suggestion, immediately get an attorney, secure an attorney-

Danny Glover: Absolutely.

Scott Neal: … to protect you?

Danny Glover: Absolutely, because-

Scott Neal: Only do what he or she tells you to do.

Danny Glover: Because your ordinary Joe Blow who’s hurt has some immediate fears, you know?

Scott Neal: Right.

Danny Glover: How am I going to provide for myself and my family? Am I going to lose my job? Is my arm ever going to get better? So when the insurance company is saying, “Hey, we’re going to take care of all your bills and we’re going to pay for your time out of work.” That soothes those immediate fears. What people don’t know is unless you’re in the workers’ comp scenario, but in a car wreck, in a industrial accident, you’re entitled … The law says you’re entitled to a lot more than just your medical bills paid and your lost wages. So the insurance company preys on those fears that people have and then they get you to sign things, they get you to give away rights that you may not even have known about, and in the end, they keep that money and it goes into the profit margin.

Scott Neal: Danny, just in working obviously here at Forest Park with a lot of just common everyday people who are working who do not have an awareness of the law and their rights, what I find is there’s a sense of obviously an attorney’s expensive. “If I get an attorney involved I’m not going to have the money.” I assume they can do some level of just asking you some questions or someone who might tell them, “Yeah, you need to go further.” There’s some kind of consultation there to let the average person know if this is something they need an attorney to help them with, or is that correct for someone?

Danny Glover: It is. It is. Most consultations on the criminal side or the personal injury side are free. On the injury side, the lawyer typically only gets paid out of whatever recovery they get for you, so you’re not having to fund the attorney’s fees as you go through the case. The attorney works two or three years and then takes his fee on the backend. At least in my firm, I fund all of the litigation expenses as well. I just had a settlement a few weeks ago and I’ve got $20,000 of my own money in expenses. Now I’ll get that back out of the settlement, but if I’d put that burden on my client like some attorneys will, most clients can’t afford to pay that.

Scott Neal: No way.

Danny Glover: You have to make sure that you can afford to proceed or that your attorney can afford to proceed. You mentioned these mailers, now it’s gotten so high tech that a lot of your huge advertising firms in Charlotte, Raleigh, Richmond, they will send really high class looking DVDs and all sorts of stuff, bells and whistles, and super. They impressed me, I’m super impressed by them, but they’re not from here and they don’t know what a jury’s likely to do with a case here.

Scott Neal: The consultation as well, is not only helping the potential client to know whether or not they need to secure you, but it’s also you assessing whether or not that this is a case that you will take. In other words there’s probably some compensation at the end. If someone calls your office and gets a free consultation with you and you’re pretty confident that they need to secure you, that’s because with your experience and your years of working with hundreds of people, you know that they need help and there’s probably going to be some compensation at the end of this or you wouldn’t take it. Is that correct?

Danny Glover: That’s correct. I’m pretty selective about the cases that I take, and that’s why in the very beginning when I described my practice I said serious injuries, because quite frankly, the 4 and 5,000 dollar injury claims are just as much work as the $400,000 injury claim, and I can’t keep my doors open spending all my time for that little return. Frankly, when you’re talking about those really small cases, I can’t add much value to what my client can get for themselves. So in those scenarios, I like to educate people on how to handle those little claims themselves, how to deal with the insurance company, what tricks to expect, and-

Scott Neal: So you will assist someone even if it’s just a smaller injury, just to help them as a person?

Danny Glover: Yeah. You know, I leave the door open, “Call me if anything comes up that we’ve not discussed.” And people very rarely do. They seem to be appreciative of that. A lot of attorneys will take any case, and unfortunately unless you’re in one of the major injury firms with 50 to 100 lawyers in it, when you have attorneys taking all these small cases they get so bogged down that the little cases get pushed to the back and get neglected. I just am not comfortable working that way.

Scott Neal: That’s very helpful, Danny. Thank you for that. I’m hopeful people listening will take your advice to heart and follow the rights that they have, and make some phone calls if they need your assistance because I think that’s hugely helpful. I want to change direction just a little bit and ask you some little bit more personal questions about leadership, about growth, because obviously you’re very successful. You’ve had to go to school, get a great education, own your own business today. Looking across our landscape, some of the young people in colleges, high school, what are some of the barriers to personal growth you see? If you could stand in front of a classroom and say, “Guys, if you want to be successful, here’s some things you need to know. Here’s what I see as some of the things that slow you down.” Just some personal things that you would say to becoming the best they possibly can be.

Danny Glover: Fear.

Scott Neal: Okay.

Danny Glover: I think that’s the number one limiter to success. Being afraid to take a chance. Being afraid to succeed frankly. Especially in the legal field where every day you’re getting told you’re wrong, either by the prosecutor, and in our church here, Kim Planey’s a member. She is the chief prosecutor in Pasquotank County and an excellent felony prosecutor, but it’s her job to convict my clients. To do that she has to tell me why I’m wrong about things, or why my client was wrong. Insurance companies all day long telling me how I’m wrong about the value of this case. My clients telling me how I’m wrong because they don’t like what I’m hearing. That becomes, unless you keep it in the right perspective, that can lead to fear that maybe I am wrong, maybe I shouldn’t take that chance.

Danny Glover: When you back it up and talk about personal growth, I see a lot of people who talk about, “I have this idea,” or talk about, “I want to do this.” And they just never do because they’re scared to come out of their comfort zone. They’re scared to take a chance because they don’t want to fail. To me that’s the number one biggest limiter.

Scott Neal: Yeah. Now I would imagine, obviously correct me if I’m wrong, that it wasn’t up and to the right from the moment you went into college and to where you are today, you’ve obviously had some challenges along the way and you’ve had to face those fears and keep moving forward, correct?

Danny Glover: Well, yeah. I haven’t always done a really good job of that. Luckily my wife is one of the smartest, most intuitive people I know. She has had to kick me in the tail more than once to take steps that I was uncomfortable doing. I appreciate her for doing that. I saw both of my parents have to take hard steps. My mom had me when she was 18, my dad was 22, he was a drill instructor in the army, she was still at home in high school. They ended up getting married. I know that I interrupted my mom’s education plans and work plans, and when I was very young, three or four, my dad went into the ministry and we moved to Florida for him to go to bible school for several years. Then we moved to Texas for him to go to seminary for several years. Then we moved back to Kentucky where he had been ordained at the base town of Fort Knox.

Danny Glover: During that whole time my mom now had two kids and dad’s not working basically because he’s in school full-time, pastoring in small churches on the weekends. So she had to work and support us. Then once dad became a full-time pastor she was able to go back to school and become a nurse. By that time I’m graduating high school. So the whole time I was there I saw them making sacrifices and working hard, and they both become very, very successful. Mom ended up on the faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, at the medical facility there. Dad pastored for 25 years and then went into his own business doing business leadership training, working with the John Maxwell team, doing some personality insight stuff. It was not the typical way to get there, like I did, which is graduate, four years of college, three years of law school, take a job, work non-stop. They had it much more difficult than I did.

Scott Neal: You had amazing mentors in your life. I mean just the list on that story, that’s incredible what your mom and dad overcame. That’s great.

Danny Glover: Yeah, I’m proud of them.

Scott Neal: Yeah, absolutely. Well Danny, a little bit more personal than that, do you have any hobbies?

Danny Glover: I do, some I’m even willing to share with you.

Scott Neal: Sure.

Danny Glover: I love golf. I caught the bug probably six years ago.

Scott Neal: How often do you get a chance to play?

Danny Glover: Way too often.

Scott Neal: Oh yeah. Any chance you get, right?

Danny Glover: Any chance I get. My oldest son luckily got into golf too and playing high school golf, and so he and I were able to play a little bit. My youngest son, I just can’t get him motivated yet but I’m working on it. That just sort of came out of nowhere and I can’t explain how that happened but it did. Before that I raced bicycles with a couple of guys here, and we would train a couple of hundred miles a week. Then every weekend be South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, mountains, wherever, racing all weekend. That was 30 or 40 pounds ago.

Scott Neal: That’s great.

Danny Glover: Again, just competition.

Scott Neal: Let me ask you about golf. Do you have a particular favorite place you play golf, or maybe the best place you’ve ever played before? You’d love to go back and do it again?

Danny Glover: I love the Mid Pines and Pine Needles courses in Southern Pines. I have not traveled the world to play golf like a lot of golfers do. I’m a member here at what used to be the Pines, now it’s the YMCA facility. Just because it’s convenient and there’s a great group of guys there that we play with regularly. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I played college baseball, so to go from hitting 95 mile an hour fastballs and 90 mile an hour sliders to trying to hit a ball that’s just sitting there on a tee, it’s hard to imagine why it’s so hard.

Scott Neal: Daring you to hit it, right.

Danny Glover: Yeah.

Scott Neal: From what I, just speaking with other golfers, it’s just a constant competition with yourself, right?

Danny Glover: It is.

Scott Neal: You’re always trying to beat yourself from the last game and get the numbers down.

Danny Glover: If you keep it in perspective, yes. Unfortunately when you’re playing matches you … Poor golfers will get caught up in what their opponent’s doing and that’s about the worst thing you want to do.

Scott Neal: Right. It’s really not about the other person as much as it is you.

Danny Glover: Absolutely. You and the course.

Scott Neal: Yeah. A lot of people obviously listening … I shouldn’t say a lot, but a few people do not know you. I mean they’ve gotten to know you here in this interview, which is great, but what might be something they’d be surprised to know about you? Maybe something that you have that you enjoy? Maybe it’s reading or it’s particularly another hobby that they may just not know about. Just something interesting that they might be surprised, “Oh, I didn’t know that about Danny.”

Danny Glover: I think most people are surprised that Meredith married me. They can’t figure that out. I think people who really know me and who hang out with me a lot would be surprised at how much I do care about helping people, because I don’t come across as the soft, huggable, caring person. I’m very task oriented, I’m very into efficiency and productivity. A lot of people don’t realize that that’s, Gary Smalley would call it my love language, that’s how I serve, that’s how I help people, is by getting the things done that perhaps they can’t do themselves or don’t even know need to be done.

Scott Neal: Yeah, that’s interesting. Couple more questions on this. If you could have a meal with anybody, past or present, and just sit down with them and enjoy a meal, whether they’re living or whether they’ve passed on, who would that person be and why?

Danny Glover: You know, I would love to have eaten with Kennedy. He, despite all of the personal failures that have become the stuff of movies, he was very important to a lot of different aspects of our country when he was living. Not just the Cuba stuff, but the racial tensions that existed, and Dr. King, and there was a lot going on there that a lot of people don’t realize. I think that would’ve been very, very interesting to … Because he came from the kind of money up north, and the history of their money you wouldn’t tend to equate that with someone who was going to be so sensitive to the racial tensions in the south, but he was. You know, I hadn’t given that a whole lot of thought, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Scott Neal: That’s a great answer. I would love to do the exact same thing. I find him a fascinating man, and what he did at his age and being able to confront the issues of our day at that time, a pivotal time in our nation’s history, and he handled it beautifully.

Danny Glover: Well especially with the overbearing father that he had. Joe was-

Scott Neal: To get out from underneath his shadow and be able to do his own thing, that’s amazing.

Danny Glover: Not only his shadow, but his … What drove him was not to be the helpful mender of society that President Kennedy turned out to try to be.

Scott Neal: That’s great. I didn’t ask you, you know, you may not have an answer to this, I just thought of it. Do you have a book or anything as far as Kennedy that you’ve read, or anything that you would … A documentary maybe you’ve watched that you’d encourage some other people to check out? How did you get to know about him and why is that interesting to you?

Danny Glover: I think most of my learning of him didn’t come from reading books, but came through things I have learned as part of the North Carolina Advocates for Justice. That organization has been very instrumental in helping attorneys who help the very needy, racial injustice, economic injustice, the people who can’t afford attorneys, the pro-bono work, and the public defender work. NCAJ has a bunch of attorneys who through the years have just been on the forefront of racial inequality, racial injustice, and listening to those people, reading what those people have written, I was surprised to keep seeing references to Kennedy because I had no idea.

Scott Neal: Yeah. That’s great. Well, on a much lighter note as we wrap this up, you’re a UNC fan.

Danny Glover: I am.

Scott Neal: Yeah. That was a hard game the other night.

Danny Glover: It felt like the national championship game from a couple of years ago. Of course Duke did and they just destroyed us, but the loss the game before that where we hit the last second, or was six seconds left to tie, tie in three from deep and then they went down and made almost a half court shot. That was brutal.

Scott Neal: Any thoughts on March Madness? What do you think’s going to happen?

Danny Glover: I love it. I think this year if Marvin Bagley plays the way he did against us last game, Duke’s going to be hard to handle because he is impossible to handle. If that light switch stays on for him, they’ll be a tough out. It’s hard to believe he should be in high school, you know? He reclassified and he should be a senior this year and he’s the best player in the country in my mind. Villanova is going to be a tough out. I don’t think Carolina gets past the second weekend. I don’t think we’ve-

Scott Neal: It’s hard to admit, huh?

Danny Glover: I don’t think we’ve got the big men this year necessary to do that.

Scott Neal: Kind of a rebuilding year and hopefully they’ll be back strong soon.

Danny Glover: I hope so.

Scott Neal: Yeah, good. Well Danny, how do people contact you? What do you encourage? Website, just give us a couple addresses or one. How does someone say, “Hey, I need to get some consultation here with Danny”?

Danny Glover: Sure. My website is www.dannygloverlawfirm.com. My email is more the same, danny@dannygloverlawfirm.com. Then you can message me on Facebook, or you can call me, our office is (252) 299-5300. Because of the way our voiceover IP stuff works you have to dial that area code even if you’re in town with me. Yeah, happy to talk to anyone.

Scott Neal: Even Duke fans?

Danny Glover: Even Duke fans. I’ll charge them a little bit extra.

Scott Neal: Got it. All right Danny, great to have you today. Thank you so much for being a part of this and answering all the different questions that I threw at you. It’s an honor to have you here and I’m hopeful that more people be exposed to you and you’ll be able to help some people who are facing maybe some personal injuries or whatever it is that they’re going through, so thanks again for being with us.

Danny Glover: I appreciate you having me.

Scott Neal: All right man, take care.

Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to the Imperfect Leader Podcast with Scott Neal. Remember, nothing succeeds like imperfection. Thank you for listening.

READ MORE: There really isn’t such a thing as an accident

Liability first and foremost applies to who is at fault in the wreck – Danny Glover NC Wreck Attorney

If you have a car and someone unrelated to you is driving it and they cause it a wreck, it’s possible that you could be held responsible depending on whether they are your employee, perhaps whether you knew they were drunk and still gave them your car, whether you knew they were a habitual reckless driver and you still gave them your car.

But ordinarily just because your name is on the title does not mean you are responsible for the wreck.

It may mean that your insurance company is responsible for the wreck, but that’s because your insurance company insures not only you, but anyone driving your vehicle with your permission.

So, talking about whether or not you’re liable versus your insurance company is liable are two completely separate things.

If you were injured in a car accident in Currituck NC or are looking for an NC injury lawyer, our law office is here to help with your personal injury claim. Seeking money damages for things like lost wages, medical bills, and permanent injuries for Outer Banks accident cases requires careful consideration of what happened on the scene of the wreck.

One of the more important things experienced personal injury lawyers do is determine fault. Who caused the wreck is key to NC injury law cases. That’s because NC accident cases can involve something called contributory negligence.

Not all cases involving semi-truck accidents or motorcycle collisions in North Carolina require a jury trial. In fact, most personal injury cases in North Carolina are “settled” without the need for litigation.

Car insurance companies in NC and insurance adjustors regularly deny claims for personal injuries in wreck cases. They know and understand the personal injury laws. If they think you were at all responsible for the wreck or that even in some small way contributed to causing the accident or your injuries, they will deny your claim.

What should I do if my car accident claim was denied by the North Carolina insurance adjustor?

While lawyers are not always required in NC wreck cases, it certainly doesn’t hurt to call an experienced personal injury lawyer in Currituck NC for legal advice. What some outer banks people don’t realize is that it doesn’t cost anything to talk to a car wreck lawyer.

We offer free legal advice about what we think about how the accident laws in North Carolina will affect and your accident case or claim for money damages. That’s right, even if you choose not to retain our law office for legal representation, you will not get a bill from us unless you chose to retain our legal services.

That’s because on NC accident cases, we work on what’s called a contingent legal fee basis.

Everything you tell us during the legal consultation is strictly confidential. We keep secrets. We don’t share what you tell us with anyone. That is called attorney-client privilege in North Carolina.

What do NC accident lawyers need to know?

Wreck cases in North Carolina can get really complicated really fast. One of the first steps of legal representation by a law office involves figuring out what actually happened. That means your personal injury attorney will want to:

• Gather evidence of the accident scene
• Determine what proof for NC legal claims exists
• Obtaining the law enforcement Accident Report
• Review records of EMP Emergency Medical Personnel
• Get copies of photographs, drawings, video and audio recordings

If you have questions like, “Do I have a case? Can I make a claim for damages in North Carolina for a wreck case,” we’re here to help.

Call NOW for FREE CONSULTATION 252-299-5300

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