Frequently Asked Questions

How much is my case worth?

What if I don’t live in Albuquerque or Rio Rancho? Can I still consult with GOODWIN LAW OFFICE?

What will this cost me?

Are there any hidden costs?

Do I really need a lawyer?

How long does a case take?

How do I pay for my medical bills?

Does the insurance company have to pay my lost wages?

Does the insurance company have to pay “punitive damages”?

How much is pain and suffering worth?

How do I pay for expert witnesses?

What is a wrongful death case?

If a minor child is seriously injured, who gets the money if we win?

How long do I have to file my lawsuit?

What should I do if I’m ready to seek legal advice from a lawyer?

How much is my case worth?

Deciding how much your New Mexicopersonal injury case is worth is a very important job to be performed by your personal injury lawyer.

It’s important that we not undervalue your New Mexico personal injury case because then you might accept a settlement offer that's less than fair. It’s also important not to overvalue your case because then you might turn down a fair settlement offer and go to trial and end up getting less money.

Your best bet is to consult with an experienced New Mexico personal injury lawyer who has handled thousands of personal injury cases in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and other cities throughout New Mexico. By relying on the experience of a Rio Rancho and Albuquerque personal injury lawyer who has seen thousands of personal injury cases settle and go to trial, you will get the best estimate of what your New Mexico personal injury case is worth.

Some of the factors we use to determine the value of a personal injury case in New Mexico are:

The amount of medical bills
The amount of lost wages
The amount of pain and suffering
How long the injury lasts
The amount and intensity of pain
Whether the injury is permanent
The impact of the injury on activities and enjoyment of life
The amount of future medical bills and pain, if any
Any permanent scarring or disfigurement
Ability to earn a living in the future

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What if I don’t live in Albuquerque or Rio Rancho? Can I still consult with GOODWIN LAW OFFICE?

Yes. We represent clients all over the state of New Mexico. We take pride in our rapid response service to clients everywhere in New Mexico. In serious cases, our personal injury lawyer will travel to your town or city to meet with you and to collect evidence if necessary. Over the years, we have represented New Mexico personal injury clients in almost every county of New Mexico.

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What will this cost me?

Personal injury lawyers take personal injury cases on contingency fees, which means you pay nothing up front, you don’t pay a retainer, and you don’t pay by the hour. Instead, you pay the personal injury lawyer a fee out of the final settlement or recovery at the end of the case. If we get no settlement or recovery, you pay no lawyer fee.

At Goodwin Law Office, our usual personal injury fee is one-third of the gross settlement or recovery, although this can be adjusted up or down depending on the case.

Use of the “contingency fee” helps level the playing field in our legal system because it gives equal access to our courts for all people, even those who couldn’t normally afford to pay for an experienced personal injury lawyer. Most people simply can’t afford to hire a personal injury lawyer to take on well-financed corporations and insurance companies. With the “contingency fee,” everyone can protect their rights by hiring a good personal injury lawyer.

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Are there any hidden costs?

In addition to the contingency fee, the client also pays for expenses and costs. But the majority of personal injury lawyers in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque pay for many of the costs as they arise. At the end of the case, the client reimburses the personal injury lawyer for these expenses from the final settlement or recovery.

Common costs in personal injury cases are expenses paid to healthcare providers for medical records and payments to police departments to get accident reports. These costs are typically less than $100.00 to $300.00 in most cases.

Costs are much greater when we file personal injury lawsuits, hire expert witnesses, and go to court. The amount of these costs depends on the level of complexity of the case. Examples of these costs are payments to expert witnesses, preparation of trial exhibits, and costs for depositions. Often times, personal injury lawyers in Rio Rancho and Albuquerquewill advance many of these litigation costs and then get reimbursed by the client out of the final settlement or recovery.

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Do I really need a lawyer?

Yes. Retaining the services of a qualified personal injury lawyer in Rio Rancho or Albuquerque is a great advantage, but you also need to hire a Rio Rancho or Albuquerque personal injury lawyer with extensive trial and litigation experience that specializes in personal injury cases in New Mexico.

You will benefit greatly from having an experienced Rio Rancho orAlbuquerque personal injury lawyer at the beginning of your case to handle matters such as giving legal advice before you make statements to adjusters, gathering and preserving evidence before it disappears, making sure your medical bills get paid, and making sure your injuries and losses are properly documented so you get what’s fair in the end.

You will also need an experienced personal injury lawyer if you must file a lawsuit and go to court in New Mexico.
There is also something to be said for the peace of mind you get when you hire an experienced accident lawyer or personal injury lawyer in Rio Rancho or Albuquerque to handle your case. Clients are confident knowing that an experienced New Mexico auto accident or personal injury lawyer is on their side.

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How long does a case take?

It depends on whether your New Mexico personal injury case settles or goes to trial.

You should not even try to settle a New Mexico personal injury case until after you have fully recovered from your injury, or until you have gotten as good as you are going to get. The reason for this is that once you settle your personal injury case, it’s closed forever and you can’t go back and get more money. So to be sure you get paid for all your losses, we wait to settle your case until after you have had all your losses, or until we know the full extent of any permanent disability, injury, or future prognosis.

The duration of your personal injury case will first depend on how long it takes you to recover from your personal injury. There are exceptions to this, but this is the general rule.

When your Rio Rancho or Albuquerque personal injury case is ready for settlement, it can then take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to finish settlement negotiations with the adjuster. Most Rio Rancho and Albuquerque personal injury cases settle at this stage.

If we can’t reach a fair settlement, we then file a personal injury lawsuit to go to court to decide your personal injury case. In New Mexico, it usually takes one to three years for a case to get to trial after a personal injury lawsuit is filed.

However, even after we file a personal injury lawsuit it’s common for the insurance company to offer a settlement before trial.

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How do I pay for my medical bills?

The other person’s insurance company must pay your medical bills, but the insurance company won’t pay anything until you’re ready to accept a lump sum settlement to settle your entire claim. This means the insurance company will pay your medical bills, but not until the end of the personal injury case.

You must therefore find ways to pay your medical bills while you wait for your final personal injury settlement or court verdict. There are 3 possible ways we can get your bills paid while waiting to settle your personal injury case in Rio Rancho or Albuquerque, New Mexico:

1. Health insurance - This includes any group health plan you have at work, private health insurance, Medicaid or Medicare.

   • Medical payments coverage- In car accident, motorcycle accident, or truck accident cases in New Mexico, you may have full coverage on your personal auto insurance policy to pay some of your medical bills. In a slip and fall accident in New Mexico, the property owner may have medical payments coverage on their premises insurance policy to pay for some of your medical bills.
   • Letter of Protection- A New Mexico personal injury lawyer can give a letter of guarantee to your doctor promising to pay medical bills from the final settlement. Many healthcare providers will take a letter of guarantee from a personal injury lawyer, and hold the bills until the end of the case.

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Does the insurance company have to pay my lost wages?

Yes. New Mexicopersonal injury law requires that insurance companies pay lost income in personal injury cases in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and throughout the entire state of New Mexico. However, you must be able to prove that your injury prevents you from doing your job. It is helpful to get a report from your doctor confirming your disability.

The bad news is the insurance company won’t agree to pay any part of your New Mexico personal injury case, including lost wages, until you are ready to accept a final lump sum settlement of the entire personal injury case. Therefore, although they pay lost wages, you may not get this money for many weeks, months, or sometimes years. This delay is very difficult in cases of serious personal injury with a sudden drop in family income.

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Does the insurance company have to pay “punitive damages”?

Although you hear a lot about punitive damages on the news and in public reports, the truth is punitive damages are usually not paid in personal injury cases in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, or in other cities in New Mexico.

Punitive damages are different than most items of compensation in a New Mexico personal injury case. Most items of compensation are payments to you for your losses, such as payments for your medical expenses, your lost wages, and your pain and suffering. Under New Mexico law, punitive damages are extra payments that the at-fault person must pay as punishment for behavior that is unusually dangerous, reckless, immoral, or intentional. The amount of punitive damages depends on how bad the behavior was. So punitive damages are only paid in New Mexico personal injury cases when the defendant’s behavior was more than simply carelessness or negligence; the behavior must be highly reckless, immoral, or intentional to support an award of punitive damages in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and throughout New Mexico.

An example of a personal injury case where you can get punitive damages is when you are injured by a drunk driver in a car accident, motorcycle accident, or truck accident.

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How much is pain and suffering worth?

There is no direct answer to this in any law book. In the end, pain and suffering is worth whatever your judge or jury decide at trial, and every case is different. So, before trial, when we put a value on pain and suffering in personal injury cases, we are really just predicting what a judge or jury would award at trial.

As experienced personal injury lawyers in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, we have seen thousands of personal injury cases settle or go to trial in New Mexico, so we are good at predicting what a judge or jury might award.

There are some general guideposts which have developed over the years based on what juries have historically awarded in personal injury cases in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and New Mexico. For example, in cases where there is no serious permanent injury or death, New Mexico personal injury lawyers often obtain settlements, before deductions for attorneys fee, costs, and payment of medical bills, of approximately two to three times the amount of the total medical bills. This is not always the case, but it is fairly common in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and throughout New Mexico.

In more serious personal injury and wrongful death cases in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, including cases of permanent injury or death, settlements and court verdicts are usually much greater than three times the amount of medical bills.

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How do I pay for expert witnesses?

Expert witnesses in New Mexico personal injury cases can be very expensive, but they are required in many personal injury cases. Common examples are accident reconstruction experts in auto accident cases, and doctors in medical malpractice cases.

Personal injury lawyers in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and throughout New Mexico sometimes advance the costs for paying expert witnesses. The client then reimburses the personal injury lawyer out of the final settlement or court verdict. Because these costs can be very high, personal injury lawyers must be careful to take only cases they feel they can win, and then aggressively pursue the personal injury case to victory.

If we win at trial, the losing party is usually required to repay many of our litigation costs so not all of the expert witness costs are repaid by the client.

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What is a wrongful death case?

A wrongful death case in New Mexico occurs when someone dies due to a safety violation or negligence committed by someone else. New Mexico wrongful death cases can arise from car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, bicycle accidents, pedestrian accidents, and even slip and falls. Wrongful death cases in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque and New Mexico are filed by surviving family members who must be appointed as personal representatives in order to file the wrongful death case.

The at-fault person must pay the following items of compensation in a New Mexico wrongful death case:

1. Funeral and burial expenses.
2. Medical bills, if any, incurred after the injury but before death.
3. Pain and suffering, if any, experienced by the deceased before death.
4. Loss of the deceased’s future income.
5. The value of the deceased’s life apart from earnings capacity.
6. Emotional distress to surviving family members caused by the loss of the companionship and guidance of the deceased.

The money which is received in a New Mexico wrongful death case goes to the surviving family members who are named in the New Mexico wrongful death statute. When a child dies, it is common for the natural parents to be the beneficiaries.

When a parent or spouse dies, it is common for surviving children or surviving spouses to be the beneficiaries. The determination of who the beneficiaries are can sometimes be complicated depending on the family situation.

As wrongful death lawyers in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, our goal is to make the guilty party pay, and to get money for surviving family members such as children who will need the money for education and assistance.

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If a minor child is seriously injured, who gets the money if we win?

The personal injury settlement money for a minor child must go to the child, and cannot be used by parents for household or personal needs.

In cases where a minor receives a substantial amount of money in a personal injury or wrongful death case in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, or New Mexico, we often create special trust accounts to make sure the money is protected for the exclusive use of the child, and so the money is properly invested for the child’s future needs, such as college expenses.

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How long do I have to file my lawsuit?

The deadline for filing a lawsuit in New Mexico is called the “statute of limitations.” If you fail to file your personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit within the statute of limitations you automatically lose your case.

The statute of limitations for most personal injury claims in New Mexico is three years. But this is not always the case, so it is very important that you ask a qualified New Mexico lawyer what the statute of limitations is for your case.

One exception to the three-year statute of limitations is for claims against the city, county, or the state. These claims usually have a two-year statute of limitations under New Mexico law, and there is also a separate deadline in these cases requiring that you give notice of your claim within 90 days after the injury or within six months if there is a death.

There are also separate deadlines for cases against federal agencies and federal employees, and there are different statutes of limitations when the injured person is a minor child.

If you want to know what the statute of limitations is for your case, you should call an experienced personal injury lawyer in Rio Rancho or Albuquerque.

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What should I do if I’m ready to seek legal advice from a lawyer?

If you're ready to contact a Rio Rancho personal injury lawyer or an Albuquerque personal injury lawyer, you can call us for a free personal injury consultation. Our Rio Rancho and Albuquerque personal injury lawyer can answer all your questions over the phone or in a face-to-face meeting in Rio Rancho or Albuquerque. All personal injury consultations are free.

You can also send an email to our Rio Rancho and Albuquerque personal injury lawyer by completing and clicking on the helpful “Contact Us” form on the right side of this web page. And if you click on the “Getting Started” link at the top of this website, you will find useful information for getting started with your Rio Rancho or Albuquerque personal injury or wrongful death case.

We’re confident that when you meet with us, either in Rio Rancho or Albuquerque, you will find you can trust us to handle your personal injury case. Our Rio Rancho and Albuquerque personal injury lawyer is honest and experienced.

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