Our attorneys are dedicated to the well-being of our clients, and we have the experience to handle all types of vehicular accident cases, whether it’s a straightforward car crash or a complex truck accident with multiple vehicles and insurers.

We have found that our professional reputation is an almost immediate benefit to our clients. Insurance companies know that we are a firm that only accepts real cases with real victims.

It’s a fact of life. Every time you and your loved ones get in a car and travel our roadways, you run the risk of serious personal injuries as the result of a crash. Drivers on the streets, roads and highways of Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Maryland make mistakes behind the wheel every day, causing motor vehicle accidents and serious injuries. The number of fatalities nationwide in 2014 was 32,675 individuals, with another 2.3 million people suffering injuries sustained as a result of accidents on our national roadways.

In Virginia, 123,579 total crashes were reported in 2012, with 775 fatalities and 67,004 injuries, according to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

In 2011, Washington, D.C. had 17,951 total motor vehicle crashes, 32 motor vehicle accident fatalities, and 7,335 non-fatal injuries, according to the District of Columbia Department of Transportation.

According to the Maryland Department of Transportation, over 90 percent of crashes in the state are caused by driver error. In 2011, there were nearly 90,000 motor vehicle crashes in Maryland, with 487 fatalities, and 44,491 total injuries resulting from those accidents.

Motor vehicle insurance companies do not like to pay money for car accident personal injury claims. After a car crash, a representative of the negligent party’s auto insurance company may call and make a settlement offer in your personal injury case, even before the full extent of your injuries can be determined. Please remember that signing a release of your personal injury claim, in exchange for an insurance company check, most likely will extinguish your personal injury claim forever. The insurance company in many cases will seek to deny your claim by casting doubt on your injuries or saying you were at fault in the accident. They have abundant resources to fight your case. For example, insurance companies have a lawyer on the payroll to handle the claim before you have even arrived in the emergency room. You need an experienced attorney to level the playing field if you or your loved ones were victimized on our roadways by negligent, distracted or drunk drivers. You need legal representation if you or your loved one was killed or seriously injured on our roadways. The attorneys at Burke Stein Rosenberg PLLC will be able to answer your questions and explain your legal rights after you have been injured in a crash. Once we accept your automobile accident injury claim, we immediately begin working to obtain for you the maximum compensation allowed by law.

We will:

• Conduct a thorough investigation
• Acquire all available evidence needed to prove and maximize your claim
• If needed, we will work with auto accident reconstruction experts to prove that the other party is at fault
• Utilize your treating doctors or independent medical experts to support your claim for the full extent of your injuries

Many car accident victims believe that injury claim resolution is something they can easily handle without hiring a qualified car accident lawyer, and they attempt to negotiate directly with the insurance company’s claims representatives. In any case involving serious injury, you should refrain from doing so. Insurance companies are in the business of making money, and will therefore try to pay accident victims as little as possible. If a claimant is not represented by a qualified auto accident attorney, an insurance company will usually try to settle the claim to the claimant’s detriment.

When dealing with motor vehicle accident victims, insurance companies usually pretend at the outset that they will pay fair compensation, but then take advantage of the victim by taking a recorded statement from them regarding their injuries and the cause of the accident, have them examined by their physicians, and otherwise build their case against them, and end up offering an unreasonably low settlement amount.

If you are physically able you should:

• Call for the police and an ambulance.
• Obtain the name, address and telephone number of the all drivers involved in the accident.
• Obtain each driver’s car insurance company’s name and telephone number, and the policy number, if available.
• Cooperate with the police in preparing an accident report and tell them of any admissions the other party made before they arrived.
• Photograph the vehicles involved in the collision.
• Go in the ambulance and follow-up with a physician without delay if you are experiencing any pain. Do not be fooled into wishful thinking that the pain will just go away without proper evaluation and treatment.
• Report the accident to your insurance company, regardless of who is at fault.
• Get legal advice before filling out insurance documents, giving tape-recorded statements to any insurance company (even your own company), or meeting with any insurance company representative.
• Photograph your injuries. This will document the magnitude of your injury as the scars, bruises and cuts may heal.
• Gather all insurance policies in your household for evaluation. You may be entitled to insurance coverage under each separate insurance policy.
• Get legal advice before signing any check or document from an insurance company.