After a car accident, you may be facing serious injuries, expensive medical bills, and uncertainty about how to move forward. Unfortunately, insurance companies will look for ways to shift the blame onto you to reduce or deny your claim entirely. Under North Carolina’s “contributory negligence” law, they can do so if they can prove you shared at least 1% of fault for the collision.
Insurers will point to any detail, whether it’s your speed, reaction time, or the circumstances of the crash, to argue that you were partially responsible. Herb Auger, founding attorney at Auger & Auger Accident and Injury Lawyers, understands how devastating this can be.
In 1992, while he and his wife, Arlene, were in law school, Herb was seriously injured by a drunk driver. That experience gave him firsthand insight into how complicated and unfair the recovery process can feel, driving him to dedicate his career to helping injury victims rebuild their lives.
Our car accident lawyers in Hickory take on insurers that try to avoid accountability and work to protect injury victims from unfair blame-shifting tactics. With our firm, you don’t have to deal with the process or the insurance companies alone. Call us today for a free consultation. With our A&A Zero Fee Guarantee™, you won’t pay anything upfront, and you owe us nothing unless our Hickory personal injury lawyers win.
Why Choose Our Hickory Car Accident Attorneys to File Your Claim?
Auto accident claims are uniquely challenging in North Carolina because of the state’s contributory negligence rule. Insurers know how to use this harsh standard to their advantage through blame-shifting tactics. Without experienced legal representation, these tactics could leave you with nothing to cover your medical bills, lost wages, or long-term expenses.
That’s where we come in. Since 1995, Auger & Auger has fought to level the playing field for injury victims in Hickory and across North Carolina. Over the years, we’ve recovered over $100 million for our clients with a 99.5% success rate in the cases we’ve handled.
Our priority is building strong, evidence-driven claims to protect our clients from the blame-shifting strategies insurers use. Our Hickory car accident attorneys apply decades of legal experience in the following ways:
- We build strong cases from day one: We collect police reports, witness statements, accident scene photos, and other crucial evidence to prove who was at fault.
- We push back on insurers: We handle all communication and negotiations with the insurance companies, countering their tactics and preventing them from delaying or denying your claim.
- We protect your rights: By preparing every case as if it’s going to trial, we show insurers that we are ready to fight and that stalling or lowball offers won’t intimidate us.
- We remove the burden from you: As a family-run firm, we understand how stressful a car accident can be, which is why we handle every part of the process so you don’t have to.
When you hire us, you also do not have to stress about paying upfront fees. Under our A&A Zero Fee Guarantee™, you pay nothing upfront, and you owe us nothing unless we win.
How Our Car Accident Lawyers Gather and Use Evidence to Push Back on Insurers’ Tactics
Insurance companies act quickly to gather information that supports their narrative while working to minimize or even distort the facts. They may focus on incomplete police reports, misinterpret skid marks, or attempt to use your own words against you, all to place fault on you and reduce their liability.
Without strong evidence to counter the insurer’s arguments, you stand to lose out on recovering any compensation at all, leaving you to cover medical bills and ongoing accident-related expenses. Our Hickory car wreck lawyers are prepared to stop these tactics by gathering a complete and accurate picture of what happened.
We do this by:
- Preserving evidence: We send preservation letters to prevent insurers or other parties from destroying evidence, such as surveillance footage.
- Demanding records: We use subpoenas to secure relevant information, such as phone records or vehicle maintenance logs, especially if your claim involves a commercial vehicle.
- Reconstructing the accident: We may work with accident reconstruction specialists who analyze the crash scene, vehicle damage, and physical evidence to create a report showing exactly what happened and why the other party is responsible.
- Witness interviews: We identify and interview witnesses who can provide statements to counter the insurer’s version of events.
- Addressing medical evidence: We gather medical records, doctors’ reports, and medical specialists’ opinions to connect your injuries directly to the accident.
We conduct an independent investigation and apply the evidence to demonstrate another driver’s liability. When insurance companies and defense teams realize we’ve done the work to prove your case, they know that stalling or offering unfair settlements won’t work.
Filing a Claim Does Not Stop the Statute of Limitations
You may assume that filing an insurance claim is enough to protect your right to pursue compensation after a car accident. Simply starting a claim with the insurer will not pause the statute of limitations, though. Under N.C.G.S. § 1-52, you have just three years from the accident date to file a lawsuit for personal injury. Once that time passes, your legal right to pursue compensation is gone, no exceptions.
Insurance companies will use stalling tactics to take full advantage of this deadline. Our car crash attorneys in Hickory don’t let insurance companies use time against you. From the moment you hire us, we take action to protect your claim so the statute of limitations never puts your compensation at risk.
We push back when insurers try to stall decisions or negotiations. We don’t sit back and wait. We set the pace for your case. If the insurer continues to delay or refuses to settle fairly, we file a lawsuit well before the statute of limitations expires.
Call Us for Help After an Auto Collision in Hickory
After a car accident, recovering from injuries and bills is hard enough without having to face insurance companies intent on paying you as little as possible. You don’t have to file a claim on your own, though. You can hire our attorneys to push back against lowball offers and handle every part of the process to prove the other driver’s responsibility.
Call Auger & Auger today to access a free, confidential consultation. The sooner you start your claim, the sooner we can build a case that protects your right to compensation.
