Arizona Personal Injury Laws

In a wreck? It seems like the whole world is crashing down around you. When this happens you need someone who can put the pieces of your life back together again. In a wreck? Need a check? Make one call, that’s all. Call 977-1900.

By: Kevin Rowe

Medical Malpractice Claims in Phoenix

We handle medical malpractice claims. A lot of lawyers don’t. They’re very time consuming, they’re very expensive often times. We have an obligation to establish that your physician has breached the standard of care, fell below the standard of care, and that that breach has caused you injury. You may have been harmed by your physician, and you may have a viable malpractice claim, but it may not be economically worth pursuing.

Pursuing Malpractice Claims

Often times these days, medical malpractice claims take tens of thousands and we’ve had some, as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars in client costs to pursue them to conclusion. It’s gotta be a good injury, it’s gotta be significant, because otherwise, it may not be cost-effective to pursue it.

Wattel & York

If you’ve been injured, give us a call. We’ll tell you if we think we can help you out. Call is free, consultation is free. We represent you. We work on a contingency basis. That means no money up front. We get paid at the end of the case. And if we don’t collect money for you, there’s no fee.

By: David Wattel

About Jess Lorona

My name is Jess Lorona, I practice personal injury and civil litigation at the law firm of Lorona Mead PLC. I’ve been practicing law for 31 years. I am a native Arizonan and because of that, I have a lot of experience with all of Arizona.

Experience

I think that people hire me because of my experience and the training that I’ve had. I believe people hire me because of the fact that I’m a judge pro-tem. I serve as a judge in various courts. Having experience in all of these courts gives you the ability to, in any situation, know how to handle a case and I think that’s very valuable for any lawyer. I think my approach to law is based upon my experience, my experience in the courtroom, my experience outside of the courtroom.

Key Differences

I think that what makes me different from other attorneys is I have compassion, I’m a very caring person and I’m very humble. I believe I’m very concerned with a client’s needs. I always maintain contact with my clients. I make sure that they feel comfortable with me and with their case. You know, clients always have questions and concerns. A lot of times they don’t know the system and have never been involved with the system before and because of that, they’re very scared. They may have a million questions. They really don’t know what’s going on so it’s our job to make sure that they feel good. I think I can help my clients by understanding their needs. They need to feel it’s ok to call you on the phone everyday. They need to feel it’s ok to send you an email to ask you questions. They need to feel like their questions are important. We need to treat all of our clients like they’re important and their questions are important. I make sure that they know that I care about their case and I care about them more particularly. And I think that the client needs to know at that first meeting that hey, Jess is going work really hard for me, no matter what he’s going to work hard for me.

Lorona Mead

In today’s day in age, less and less cases settle, so a lawyer has to be ready to fight a case. I will fight to the end. I will take the case to trial and do whatever is necessary to make sure that my client achieves a result that is beneficial to him or her. If you want an attorney that’s honest and dedicated, then you should call me, Jess Lorona, at (602) 385-6818 or email me.

By: Jess Lorona

Qualifications

Personal injury actions require, by their very nature, that someone be injured. The injury can be physical or in some cases, emotional. The general goal of a personal injury action is to place the blame for the injury on the party who caused it, and to require them to compensate the injured person for the losses they have sustained. So if you have been injured either intentionally or negligently, you may be able to bring a personal injury claim. If you have questions or would like to know more about personal injury, contact me at (602) 385-6818 or email me.

For more information about what qualifies as a personal injury case in Arizona, please fill out an attorney’s contact form.

By: Jess Lorona

Hi, my name is Nathan Meyer. I’m a partner at Jaburg Wilk. My practice areas include insurance coverage, insurance bad faith, insurance UM and UIM litigation, as well as commercial litigation, professional liability litigation, and general liability litigation. There’s actually been some very favorable rulings for insurance companies regarding punitive damages. It started with a United States Supreme Court case in 2003 in Campbell. There is also recently been some Court of Appeals cases that has significantly reduced punitive damages award amounts to much more reasonable amounts in Arizona.

Reducing Punitive Damage Awards

In the United States Supreme court case “Campbell”, the court actually reduced a $145 million punitive damages award all the way down to a million dollars, or at least they said – they told the Utah Supreme Court, “We’re sending this back to you, and you need to reduce this award to something around a million dollars.”

In a recent Arizona Court of Appeals case, there was a $54 million punitive damages award. And the Court of Appeals initially reduced that from $54 million down to $620,000. Then the Arizona Supreme Court actually reduced it from $620,000 all the way down to $155,000. So it’s a substantial reduction.

Also you have another recent case called “Orellana the Prime Life Insurance Company”, and they reduced a punitive damage award from about $1.3 million all the way down to $320,000. So courts are really reducing some of these egregious punitive damages awards amounts down to something much more reasonable.

3 Factors Courts Consider When Reducing Punitive Damage Awards

In “Campbell V. State Farm”, that 2003 United States Supreme Court case, the court established three guide post a court should look at when they’re reviewing these large punitive damages awards.

One is reprehensibility, the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct. Two is the disparity, and that’s where you get the ratio of the punitive damages to the compensatory damages. And the third is comparability to civil authorized fines, and those are usually fines authorized by statutes.

For example, in Arizona there is a maximum $50,000 fine per six month period when you violate the unfair claim settlement practices act. So those are the three things that courts look at when considering whether to reduce punitive damages.

By: Nathan D. Meyer

Do Not Falsify Claims

One of the things that we want to make sure happens is that there are only legitimate claims being brought and pursued through the court system. The court system is overburdened as it is. Only the legitimate cases are the ones that we take. If a case is not legitimate, there’s no room for it at our justice system.

By: Thomas Richardson

My name’s Mark Raczkowski. I’m an attorney at Jones Raczkowski PC in Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve been practicing for over (11) years here in Arizona. We’ve been focusing our efforts on cases involving slip and falls and trip in falls for more than (25) years. The attorneys at my firm are passionate about what they do. We focus on our clients. We want to make sure that our clients have their questions answered. That they’re educated about the process. And that they get the compensation that they deserve.

We’re a smaller firm so we have a more personal touch with our clients. It’s easy for clients to get in touch with myself, with my partner, with staff inside the office. If somebody contacts us, we try to get back to them within (24) hours. Certainly, they should be able to speak with a staff person when they contact the office. And attorneys – if they’re not immediately available – will try to get in touch with the clients within a day or so.

We focus on slip and fall and trip and fall cases. As a result, we sue a lot of the same types of defendants around town. We know the attorneys that are going to be defending certain entities here in Phoenix, and so we know what to expect in litigation, and we know what we need to do in order to achieve a successful result.

A lot of the clients that we talk with have been rejected by other attorneys who think their case might be too hard and they don’t want to take it to trial. We’re different, and we will talk to those clients, and a lot of times we’ll take those cases, and we’ll prosecute them. If you’ve been turned down by other attorneys, and they’ve told you that your case is just too difficult, and they don’t want to handle it for you, or maybe they did a little work on it but they decided that they didn’t want to move forward with it into litigation, contact us, www.azpremiseslaw.com.

By: Mark Raczkowski

My name is Mack Jones and I’m a personal injury attorney at Jones Raczkowski PC, here in Phoenix, Arizona. Premises liability case is a case where a person is injured on the property of another, typically through a dangerous condition or dangerous instrumentality on the premises. So it is not a car accident and it’s not a medical malpractice case. It’s an injury that occurs when you fall on somebody else’s property typically.

Typically, broken sidewalk, a spill in the grocery store, falling merchandise – those are premises liability cases. In most of those types of cases, the defendant, the property owner, is going to assert that the injury is at least partially, if not completely, your fault. That’s why you need somebody who’s prepared to take the matter into litigation, and to court, because it will not resolve with a demand letter. It will have to go and be litigated.

If you have a serious personal injury, particularly if you were injured on premises, please contact my firm at (602) 840-8787, Jones Raczkowski PC.

By: Mack Jones

My name is Mark Raczkowski and I’m an attorney at Jones Raczkowski PC in Phoenix, Arizona. My recommendation is that you do not speak with an insurance representative before you’ve had an opportunity to speak with an attorney about the personal injury that you suffered. Insurance adjusters have one job, and that is to pay you the smallest amount of money possible on your claim. And the way that they can do that is by getting information from you. Some of that information, they may not even be entitled to, and so it’s important that you speak with an attorney before you start divulging information that may be detrimental to your claim on down the road. Before you speak with an insurance representative contact me at my website www.azpremiseslaw.com.

By: Mark Raczkowski