If you are injured in an accident in Nebraska, you may be able to claim compensation for your personal or property damage. To prepare a strong claim, it can be helpful hire a personal injury attorney in Nebraska. To establish your case, the attorney will need to be aware of:
- Date, and place of the accident,
- Credentials of any witnesses present at the moment,
- Details of your injuries, diagnosis and treatment,
- Proof of your loss of belongings during the accident.
Statute of Limitations
Like all other states, Nebraska has also set limitations on how long one can take to file a lawsuit against another party for your personal injury. As per the current law, Nebraska offers its residents a time limit of FOUR YEARS for filing their personal injury claim, except for cases of wrongful death or medical malpractice where the statute of limitations is two years. This time starts form the moment the accident occurred.
Insurance Claims in Nebraska
When determining liability for personal injuries, Nebraska is considered a ‘fault’ state. Under this law, a person who is injured in a motor vehicle accident usually has several options:
- He or she can file a claim under his own insurance policy.
- He or she can file a claim against the insurer of the driver who is responsible for the accident. This is also called as third party insurance claim.
- He can file a personal injury claim against the negligent party, demanding a specific amount of compensation.
Sharing Faults in a Personal Injury Claim
To determine the fault of a person, Nebraska applies a ‘modified comparative fault’ rule. Under this rule, the damages are reduced depending upon the amount of fault shared by the injured person. To better understand this, let’s take a look at an example:
Suppose a driver John is waiting at a red light when he gets rear-ended by another driver Harry. In court, it is found that during the accident, one of your car’s break lights were not working. John is determined to be 15 percent at fault, while Harry is determine to be 85 percent at fault. Hence, the compensation amount of $10,000 that John could have originally received gets reduced to $8,500 because of his own partial fault. Additionally, if the fault of John would have been more than 50 percent, he would not have been able to recover anything from his injury at all.
Damage Caps for Personal Injury
The state of Nebraska has a damage cap of $1.75 million for medical malpractice cases. This cap includes both economic and non-economic damages. However, these damage caps do not apply to other injury cases.
