When you are injured at a hotel, it already disrupts your vacation, your business, or your livelihood. People do not go through the legal process because they want to. Instead, getting the compensation you deserve for the injuries you sustained due to someone else’s negligence is necessary. Washington, DC, is home to the country’s most beautiful and historic hotels. Moreover, the hotel attorneys at Gelb & Gelb are among the best in the country for resolving negligence claims and maximizing compensation for our clients. The cost of a DC hotel injury lawyer follows a simple legal structure, which we will detail below. Several advantages come with using a contingency fee structure. First and foremost, you do not have to pay an upfront fee. This allows financially disadvantaged injury victims to recover the compensation they deserve. Furthermore, this fee structure will enable you to afford the finest legal representation in DC.
Navigating the complexities of personal injury claims without professional guidance can be daunting. We understand that handling these claims alone is like navigating a complex maze. It is particularly daunting for a layperson against a major corporation like Marriott, Hyatt, or another hotel corporation with seemingly unlimited resources. Fortunately, we have experience with this. The cost of a DC hotel injury lawyer is proportional to the amount you recover. Here, we will discuss the factors influencing lawyer costs, what a hotel injury attorney does, and how to estimate your potential legal expenses. If you believe your injuries at a hotel are due to negligence by the hotel, then we can make a claim.
However, if another guest or visitor causes your injuries to the hotel and the hotel was not negligent in allowing the guest to enter, your claim may only be against the individual.
Speak to a DC hotel injury attorney today for a free consultation to best understand the factors that influence lawyer costs as they relate to your case. Most critically, you must understand contingency fee versus hourly fee agreements. The key disadvantage of an hourly fee agreement is that you almost invariably have to pay an upfront retainer for services by that type of attorney. Otherwise, they will not start work on your case. These lawyers may tell you that payment is required to constitute consideration and make the retainer binding, but that is untrue. Our contingency fee agreement requires that you pay a legal fee only out of the recovery. In other words, you never directly pay out of pocket for legal services. Moreover, a hefty legal fee will not deter your pursuit of justice for your injuries if you hire a lawyer who charges a contingency fee.
This is because the cost of a DC hotel injury lawyer at Gelb & Gelb is only charged if we win. Thus, there is no financial risk to you. For many, especially after paying a large hotel bill to the corporation responsible for your injury, you may not be comfortable spending much money on an attorney. This is why a contingency fee agreement is so beneficial. Additionally, a percentage of attorneys may charge a flat fee. This also is disadvantageous for the injury victim.
This means that the attorney gets the same legal fee whether he wins or loses, unlike a contingency fee where the attorney is incentivized to win your case. Even with a lawyer charging an hourly rate, the lawyer is incentivized to work as hard and as long as possible. But with a flat rate, there are no incentives. Thus, we advise against hiring an attorney who uses this fee structure.
Some great news in considering the cost of a DC hotel injury lawyer at Gelb & Gelb is that the complexity of your case will have no direct bearing on the legal fee. We charge solely based on how much we recover. Even if it is a highly complex case, we will not charge more despite working hundreds of hours longer on it. Accordingly, a consultation with a skilled hotel injury lawyer is always worthwhile. Sometimes, a case involves multiple parties, insurance contracts executed in different jurisdictions with different applicable statutes, and thousands of pages of medical records. Naturally, this takes a lot of time for attorneys to review. But this is of no concern to you. Because hotel injury lawyers do not charge by the hour, you are not disincentivized from asking as many questions as you need.
The cost of a DC hotel injury lawyer is predicated on how much your case is worth. If we settle your hotel injury prior to filing suit, as we do with the vast majority of our cases, our fee is one-third of the gross recovery. However, if we file a lawsuit against the hotel on your behalf, our fee will increase to 40%. While this is less common, it does happen occasionally. We do not charge a legal fee if we are unsuccessful on your claim. We advance on your behalf for costs such as filing fees, depositions costs, expert witness costs, and administrative costs like postage. You are not responsible for these costs if we are still unsuccessful on your claim. However, if we are successful, these costs are reimbursed out of the recovery.
The only way to estimate your potential legal expenses is by estimating what your case is worth. As any personal injury lawyer will tell you, estimating the value of a case is impossible until you are finished treating. Prior to that, we do not know how you will recover. For more significant injuries, you may need multiple surgeries. If we settle your case after one surgery and it turns out you need a second, the settlement amount will not reflect the cost of that second surgery. Thus, we only settle cases once your doctors fully discharge you.
Further, some injuries get infected. You may have deep lacerations. We want to know what your scar will look like before we resolve your case. Plastic surgeons like to wait about a year after your accident before operating on your injury. Accordingly, this process takes some time. But it is worth it to maximize the compensation you recover. Unfortunately, this does not leave much room to estimate legal expenses in advance. Instead, we calculate the total legal expense once we have agreed to settle your case or have received a judgment at trial.
There is no surefire way to minimize your legal expenses when considering the cost of a DC hotel injury lawyer. You want as much recovery as possible for a hotel attorney who charges a contingent fee based on the total recovery. However, to avoid unnecessary legal expenses, we recommend against hiring an attorney who will charge an hourly rate or a flat fee. This way, your attorney is adequately incentivized to get you as much compensation as possible while still affording you the right to justice.
The cost of a DC hotel injury lawyer can be a complex subject. We are happy to discuss the legal costs associated with pursuing a hotel injury case with you. Call our office today for a free consultation at (202) 331-7227.
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