THAT INJURY MIGHT LOOK LIKE NOTHING. GIVE IT THREE DAYS.
Portsmouth traffic concentrates. Two tunnels take the city’s commute under the river, and the backups in front of them move in surges — closing, stopping, closing again. What that produces is not the dramatic collision. It is the low-speed rear-end impact, at rush hour, that everybody walks away from. Three days later the neck has locked up and there is no photograph of anything.
Those are the claims insurers fight hardest, because the damage to the car was small and they intend to argue the damage to you was small, too. Virginia courts still treat contributory negligence as a bar rather than a discount: an injured person carrying any part of the fault recovers nothing, not a reduced sum. That is why the recorded call an adjuster wants in the first week is worth having a lawyer before, not after.
Which court hears the claim depends on its size — the Portsmouth General District Court where the damages are modest, the Circuit Court where they are not. The two run on different clocks and give you different discovery, and that difference is most of what determines whether an insurer would rather pay you than stand in front of a jury. We have filed in both for decades.
WHERE THESE CLAIMS ARE WON OR LOST
TWO YEARS SOUNDS GENEROUS UNTIL YOU SPEND IT
With few exceptions, Virginia gives you two years from the date of injury to bring a claim, and two years from the date of death on a wrongful death claim. That limit is indifferent to whether treatment finished, whether an adjuster ever called back, and whether anybody explained the rule to you. Miss it and there is no claim, however good it was on the day.
Spending it is easier than it sounds. Treatment has to run long enough that a physician can say what will not improve. Records have to come in from everyone who saw you, and around here that routinely means a clinic in Portsmouth, a specialist across a tunnel, and a hospital in a third city. Meanwhile an insurer under no deadline of its own is free to use the calendar, then open with a figure that looks sensible beside the bills already paid and means nothing beside the ones still arriving.
Not all of this practice is vehicles. Falls on someone else’s property, unsafe premises, dog bites, defective products, and injuries at a business that left a known hazard exactly where it was all come to this firm as well. The rule is the same and so is the clock. Virginia DMV figures record 874 people injured in Portsmouth crashes during 2024, and that number covers only the part of this work with a vehicle in it.
DECKER LAW IN PORTSMOUTH:
IN PORTSMOUTH AND ACROSS HAMPTON ROADS
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62
injury clients represented in Portsmouth in the last two years
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16,000+
injury clients represented firmwide since 1995
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65+
years in Hampton Roads courts
ONE CALL, BEFORE THE ADJUSTER GETS ONE
It costs nothing and it commits you to nothing. Free consultation — 757-622-3317, any hour.