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Your doctors may not know, immediately after your accident, how long you will need to recover from your injuries or how much of a recovery you will eventually make. Spinal cord injury victims and traumatic brain injury victims, for example, often surprise their doctors with their recovery—both in terms of what they can accomplish and in terms of what ground they do not regain after the accident.
Because a demand for compensation after a catastrophic accident typically includes elements like your medical expenses and your pain and suffering, including the long-term limitations you face from your accident, your lawyer may advise waiting until you have progressed further through your recovery before filing your personal injury claim.
Just because you have suffered injuries in a catastrophic accident, however, does not mean you should assume you can wait to get started on protecting your legal rights. Always consult with an experienced Philadelphia personal injury attorney as soon as possible after a catastrophic accident. If you wait too long to seek experienced, skilled, legal assistance, you may lose your right to recover compensation altogether.
Contacting an attorney as soon as possible after a catastrophic accident can also make it easier to collect important evidence to support your eventual claim for damages. Witness statements, for example, may prove more accurate immediately after a catastrophic accident, before memory has a chance to fade. Catastrophic accidents often cause substantial trauma for witnesses as well as victims. Witnesses may find those memories clouded soon after the accident. Similarly, physical evidence becomes more and more difficult to locate and collect the longer you wait after an accident to get started working with an attorney.