SOMERVILLE CAR ACCIDENT LAWYER

A Somerville car accident claim runs on two separate tracks, and most people only learn the difference once the bills start arriving. The first is your own coverage, which pays quickly and without much argument about who caused the collision. The second is the claim against the driver who hit you, and that is where the real dispute lives: how badly you were hurt, how much of the blame can be shifted onto you, and what the injury will cost over the years that follow. Knowing which track you are on, and what each can and cannot do, is usually the difference between a file that closes cheaply and one that reflects the actual harm.

What your own policy pays first

Every auto policy in the state includes personal injury protection, which pays a set portion of your medical bills and part of your lost wages after a crash regardless of fault. Those benefits come from your own insurer and are meant to cover the earliest costs so treatment can start without waiting for a fault fight to resolve. They are also capped, and they run out quickly once imaging, specialists, surgery or months of physical therapy enter the picture. Your own insurer can dispute what it owes as well, questioning whether a treatment was necessary or whether a gap in care means the injury healed, and that is where problems most often begin. Treating this first layer as the whole claim is the most common and most expensive mistake made in the opening weeks.

When you can claim for pain and disruption

That first layer pays nothing for what the injury does to your life. To recover for pain and disruption from the at-fault driver, the claim has to clear a seriousness threshold — generally once reasonable medical expenses pass a set level, or where the injury involves a fracture, permanent disfigurement, or the loss of a sense. Proving the threshold is met is frequently the pivotal issue, because the insurer has every reason to argue the injury falls just short of it. That proof is built from the medical record rather than from argument: consistent treatment, a clear description of symptoms at each visit, and where needed an opinion tying the lasting damage to the collision. Once the threshold is cleared, the claim opens up to future care and the earning power you may never fully regain.

How shared blame and the clock change what you recover

What you receive also turns on how the blame splits. You can recover as long as your share of the fault stays below a majority, with the award reduced in proportion to that share, and insurers routinely try to pin extra blame on the injured driver precisely because every point they assign costs you money. An independent look at the crash — vehicle damage and resting positions, the responding officer’s account, signal timing, nearby cameras, and witnesses who saw the approach rather than only the impact — is what counters that. Time works against all of it. Most injury claims have to be brought within about three years of the collision, but that is the outer limit rather than a target, because the physical evidence, camera footage and witness memory that prove fault degrade within days. A crash involving a municipal or transit vehicle carries an additional early written-notice step that can end an otherwise valid claim if it is missed.

When coverage runs short, and where else it can come from

When the at-fault driver carries no insurance, or too little to cover a serious injury, your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage can step in to pay the difference. Those claims are made against your own insurer, which — despite being your own company — will still work to limit what it pays, so the same careful proof is required. A single crash can also involve more than one policy: a second vehicle that forced the collision, an employer whose driver was working at the time, a rideshare policy, or a vehicle owner separate from the driver. Identifying every applicable policy early matters, because the order in which they pay and the limits available often decide whether the full cost of the injury is actually recoverable.