IN VIRGINIA, ONE SENTENCE
CAN END YOUR CLAIM
Virginia is one of a handful of states that still applies pure contributory negligence. If an insurer can show you were even slightly responsible, you recover nothing. Not less — nothing.
That single rule shapes everything about a Norfolk injury claim. It’s why the adjuster is friendly. It’s why they want a recorded statement early, while you’re still apologizing out of habit. And it’s why the first call you make matters more here than it would almost anywhere else.
Norfolk sees more than 2,000 crash injuries in a year, and that’s before slip-and-falls, premises claims and everything else that lands in this practice. We’ve represented 285 injured people in this city in the last two years — the largest share of our injury work, in the city where this firm has operated since 1961.
Where a claim doesn’t settle, it’s filed in the Norfolk General District Court if the damages are modest and in the Circuit Court if they aren’t. Which door the claim goes through changes the timeline, the discovery you can get, and what the other side will pay to stay out of a jury’s hands. We’ve filed in both for sixty-five years.
WHAT WE DO DIFFERENTLY
YOU HAVE TWO YEARS.
USE THEM WELL.
Virginia generally gives you two years from the date of injury to file, and the clock does not care whether you were still in treatment or still waiting on an insurer. Wrongful death claims carry the same two-year limit, measured from the date of death. Miss it and the claim is gone regardless of merit.
Two years sounds generous until you watch it work. Medical treatment has to reach a point where a doctor can say what the lasting effect will be. Records have to be gathered from every provider. An insurer that senses no deadline pressure will take its time, then make a first offer that looks reasonable against bills you’ve already paid and nothing against the ones still coming.
Not every injury claim comes from a crash. Falls on someone else’s property, unsafe premises, dog bites, defective products, and injuries in a business that ignored a hazard all arrive here. If someone else’s carelessness caused it, the same rules and the same clock apply — and the same first call is worth making.
IN NORFOLK
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285
injury clients represented in Norfolk in the last two years
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16,000+
injury clients represented since 1995
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65+
years practicing in Norfolk’s courts
BEFORE YOU CALL THE ADJUSTER
Call us. The conversation is free, it costs you nothing to find out where you stand, and one sentence to an insurer can undo a claim that was otherwise worth pursuing. 757-622-3317 — any hour.