I live in Indiana, although the spot of this accident was on the Ohio River bridge connecting Indiana and Kentucky. It's a bit of a long one.
I had a friend recently who informed me that in Indiana you can sue for traffic accident for up to 7 years after the date of the accident. I do not know if this is true or not. My accident happened about 4 years back and I took no legal action because at the time I wasn't aware I could, and I also did not know the full repercussions of said accident.
I was driving across the Ohio River bridge when I had to merge left. I checked my mirrors, looked behind me, all was clear. I merged over into the lane fine and continued driving. A few seconds later a semi-truck hit me from behind, spinning my car across several lanes of traffic and into the median, totaling my car. There were of course several witnesses, who saw me merge left and saw the semi rear end me. The police arrived on the scene, took my story and the semi-driver's story, and witness accounts. They came back to inform me that the accident was ruled no fault because there was another witness for the semi-driver who claimed that I merged right, not left and directly into the path of the semi. I mentioned to him that if I would have done that I would have merged off the bridge into the river. He explained to me that no fault meant that we each paid our own costs (or in my case, my insurance would) and that would be the end of it. No one in my car was physically hurt, so I didn't think much of it.
A few months down the road I started twitching randomly. At first I just shook it off as being nerves (being in my first year of college and all). But a couple months later my shakes began getting worse and worse. I finally had a seizure on my birthday that year. After going to a neurologist he informed me that I had a damaged part of my brain due to a hard blow to the head, and asked me if I had hit my head recently very hard. The only incident that met the timeframe and the qualifications was the accident on the bridge.
Fast forward to today and I have increasing medical bills, medicine that doesn't always work ( and the doctors have no way to make it work 100%) and more and more lost time at work. I can't schedule anything with certainty because everyday I wake up I could be "twitchy" and have to spend the day in bed or risk having a seizure. I am not twitchy everyday, but it's completely random and I have no way of knowing when I will be or when I won't. I have to call into work sometimes because I can't reliably get there and couldn't do much if I could. I'm years behind in school because I had to take time off because of this, and my bills keep getting farther and farther behind each month because of missing work.
I don't want to sue this company for any absurd amount of money, because I understand it was an accident and I'm confident this semi-driver didn't just run me over for the hell of it. But at the same time, a lot of the problems I'm facing today are related to the incident on that bridge and if I could sue them for some money to basically help pay for my medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering I would be content. I wouldn't be asking for more than $50,000 at most. That's for roughly 4 years of partial lost wages, medical expenses, and pain and suffering. I have seizures sometimes and can't do anything about it. I've been told by my neurologist that I'll most likely have this for the rest of my life.
I'm basically asking if this is something worth pursuing, and I suppose more importantly if it's morally wrong to sue this company over this. I just feel that since they are the ones responsible for the things I've had to go through, they could at least help me foot the bill a little bit instead of relying on me to pay for all this when I did nothing wrong in the first place. It's bad enough I have to live with this the rest of my life.
Thanks in advance for any responses, I have not yet sought legal advice but I have been advised by some friends lately to do just that.
I had a friend recently who informed me that in Indiana you can sue for traffic accident for up to 7 years after the date of the accident. I do not know if this is true or not. My accident happened about 4 years back and I took no legal action because at the time I wasn't aware I could, and I also did not know the full repercussions of said accident.
I was driving across the Ohio River bridge when I had to merge left. I checked my mirrors, looked behind me, all was clear. I merged over into the lane fine and continued driving. A few seconds later a semi-truck hit me from behind, spinning my car across several lanes of traffic and into the median, totaling my car. There were of course several witnesses, who saw me merge left and saw the semi rear end me. The police arrived on the scene, took my story and the semi-driver's story, and witness accounts. They came back to inform me that the accident was ruled no fault because there was another witness for the semi-driver who claimed that I merged right, not left and directly into the path of the semi. I mentioned to him that if I would have done that I would have merged off the bridge into the river. He explained to me that no fault meant that we each paid our own costs (or in my case, my insurance would) and that would be the end of it. No one in my car was physically hurt, so I didn't think much of it.
A few months down the road I started twitching randomly. At first I just shook it off as being nerves (being in my first year of college and all). But a couple months later my shakes began getting worse and worse. I finally had a seizure on my birthday that year. After going to a neurologist he informed me that I had a damaged part of my brain due to a hard blow to the head, and asked me if I had hit my head recently very hard. The only incident that met the timeframe and the qualifications was the accident on the bridge.
Fast forward to today and I have increasing medical bills, medicine that doesn't always work ( and the doctors have no way to make it work 100%) and more and more lost time at work. I can't schedule anything with certainty because everyday I wake up I could be "twitchy" and have to spend the day in bed or risk having a seizure. I am not twitchy everyday, but it's completely random and I have no way of knowing when I will be or when I won't. I have to call into work sometimes because I can't reliably get there and couldn't do much if I could. I'm years behind in school because I had to take time off because of this, and my bills keep getting farther and farther behind each month because of missing work.
I don't want to sue this company for any absurd amount of money, because I understand it was an accident and I'm confident this semi-driver didn't just run me over for the hell of it. But at the same time, a lot of the problems I'm facing today are related to the incident on that bridge and if I could sue them for some money to basically help pay for my medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering I would be content. I wouldn't be asking for more than $50,000 at most. That's for roughly 4 years of partial lost wages, medical expenses, and pain and suffering. I have seizures sometimes and can't do anything about it. I've been told by my neurologist that I'll most likely have this for the rest of my life.
I'm basically asking if this is something worth pursuing, and I suppose more importantly if it's morally wrong to sue this company over this. I just feel that since they are the ones responsible for the things I've had to go through, they could at least help me foot the bill a little bit instead of relying on me to pay for all this when I did nothing wrong in the first place. It's bad enough I have to live with this the rest of my life.
Thanks in advance for any responses, I have not yet sought legal advice but I have been advised by some friends lately to do just that.