There are four basic things that must be satisfied for you to have a case following a Utah auto, pedestrian, trucking, motorcycle or bicycling accident.

First, there must be liability. In other words, someone else was responsible for your injuries. (If you were completely to blame, then you would not have a case.) There can be situations where liability could be a close call, or disputed. Such a situation could develop where there were no witnesses to the car accident and both drivers insist that they had the red light. These can be tricky cases since if you are 50 percent or more at fault, you lose. When it is obvious who caused the crash or the accident to happen, we say that the liability is ?clear.?

Second, we next look to ?damages.? If you were involved in a car accident and you were not injured, then we would say that you had no ?damages.? So even if the other person was clearly at fault, if you were not injured, then you cannot under Utah law make a claim. Added to this is the legal requirement that you have to have at least $3,000 in medical bills or a permanent injury from the accident.

Third, we determine if there is ?causation.? This is another legal requirement that must be satisfied. It is, simply put, that there be a link between the crash and the injuries that you claim. Gaps in treatment or later complaints down the road of certain injuries can sometimes make proving this element difficult. The severity of the crash itself also creates real problems when it comes time to prove your case. This is because in a lower-speed crash, the insurance company lawyers will argue that the forces were insufficient to have caused the injuries that you are now complaining of, or that the treatment you received was excessive because of the mild nature of the crash and that the bulk of your treatment was ?unnecessary.? Unfortunately, too many cases are spit out by a jury for lack of ?causation.? Lawyers refer to this as being ?no-caused? at trial.

Fourth, we want to make sure that there is insurance available. If you have been very seriously injured and both parties had no insurance, there is usually not much we can do in those situations. History has shown that getting a verdict against a penniless defendant is waste of time and money for all concerned.