Personal Injury Lawyer in Mobile, AL

How Does Long & Long Investigate a Serious Injury Case?

We start the day we're hired: preservation letters first, then black box data, logs, and footage secured before they disappear, then investigators, reconstructionists, and medical experts. All at our expense.

The most important evidence in a serious injury case is usually the first to go. Vehicles get repaired or sold for scrap. Surveillance systems overwrite themselves in days. Trucking companies are only required to keep certain driver records for a limited period, and once that period runs, the records are gone lawfully.

So the first move is preservation letters to every party who may be holding something. The other driver, the carrier, a property owner, and/or a nearby business with a camera pointed at the right place. Where a vehicle or piece of equipment needs to be examined before it is repaired, we move for a court order to stop the work.

Then we build the record. The documents we go after, depending on the case:

• Electronic control module (black box) and ECM download data
• Driver qualification files and hours-of-service logs
• Vehicle maintenance, inspection, and repair histories
• Dispatch and load communications, and broker records
• Dashcam, traffic-camera, and business surveillance footage
• 911 call recordings and EMS run reports
• Incident and inspection reports, and prior complaints about the same hazard
• Staffing, training, and safety records for the responsible business
• Cell phone and telematics records where impairment or distraction is at issue

Then we put people on the ground. Investigators canvas for witnesses and photograph the scene while the light, the signage, and the road surface still match the day of the crash. Accident reconstruction engineers establish speed, impact angles, and sightlines. In catastrophic cases, treating physicians and life care planners document what decades of care will cost, and vocational and economic experts quantify what the injury takes out of your working life.

Every one of those experts is paid for by the firm, not by you, and not out of your pocket while the case is pending. Case expenses are advanced and accounted for at the end, line by line.

That work is what gives a demand weight. An insurer that can see the case is fully built, and that the firm across the table is prepared to try it, evaluates it very differently than one supported by a police report and a stack of bills.

Serious Injuries, Complex Liability, and Cases Other Firms Turn Down

Some injury cases are straightforward. Many are not, and the difference usually isn't the severity of the injury, it's the complexity of the liability. Responsibility often extends past the obvious person, and in serious cases, identifying every liable party is usually what determines whether there's enough insurance to cover the loss. 

We regularly take on cases where fault is genuinely contested or spread across multiple parties:

• Multi-vehicle pileups where every driver's insurer points at someone else 
• Truck wrecks where the carrier, the broker, the shipper, and a maintenance contractor may each bear responsibility
• Industrial injuries where a workers' compensation claim sits alongside a third-party claim against an equipment manufacturer or outside contractor 
• Crashes where the investigating officer got the sequence wrong and the insurer is treating the report as settled fact
• Cases where several people were badly hurt in the same wreck and one policy limit has to be divided among them

We also handle cases where there isn't enough insurance to go around in situations where several people were badly hurt in the same wreck and a single policy limit has to be allocated. Those cases require moving quickly, understanding every available layer of coverage (including underinsured motorist, umbrella, and employer policies), and knowing when to litigate rather than accept a pro-rata share of a small policy.

Additionally, we handle catastrophic injuries like: 

• Spinal cord injuries 
• Traumatic brain injuries
• Severe burns 
• Wrongful death

These cases turn on proving what a lifetime of altered capacity is worth, which is expert-intensive work that has to be funded and built long before anyone talks about a number.

If you've been told your case is too complicated, or you've already been given a number that doesn't feel close to right, we'll look at it.

Why Injury Cases in Mobile Are Different

Mobile isn't a generic accident market, and the claims we see reflect the specific way this city moves:

Who Deals With the Insurance Company — Me or My Lawyer?

Once you hire us, the adjusters call us instead of you. We handle every statement, request, and negotiation, and we read every policy involved to find coverage you may not know exists. 

From the day you sign, you are done talking to the other side. We notify every carrier that you are represented, and by law the direct calls stop. Nobody records you. Nobody asks you to sign a medical authorization broad enough to pull twenty years of unrelated records. Nobody catches you on a bad afternoon and gets you to agree that your back was already bothering you before the wreck.

What we take over:

• All contact with the at-fault driver's adjuster, and with your own carrier where UM/UIM applies
• Recorded statement requests; declined, or given on terms we set
• Medical authorizations, narrowed to what is actually relevant
• Property damage, total-loss valuation, storage fees, and rental car arrangements
• The demand, the negotiation, and every offer, which comes to you with an honest assessment rather than a recommendation dressed up as one

Finding every policy that applies

Most people assume there is one policy: the at-fault driver's. Often there are several, and the difference between finding them and not finding them is the difference between a policy-limiting case and a full recovery. We read the declarations pages rather than take a carrier's summary of them.

How to Choose a Personal Injury Lawyer in Alabama

If you've never hired a lawyer, the hardest part is that every firm's advertising sounds the same. Here's what actually distinguishes them, and what to ask:

Our personal injury attorneys are comfortable answering all six, and we'd encourage you to ask them of every firm you talk to, including us.

The Long & Long Client Promise

Most firms tell you they'll take care of you. That's easy to say and impossible to verify before you've hired someone. So here is what we commit to, specifically:

• You will always know where your case stands. We update you at every milestone, and on a regular schedule even when nothing has changed — because "no news" is its own kind of anxiety.
• You will talk to an attorney, not only to staff. You'll have direct attorney contact at every key decision point in your case.
• Your calls get returned within 24 hours. Not eventually. 
• We'll explain everything in plain English. No document goes to you without an explanation of what it is, why it exists, and what happens next.
• We'll be honest about what your case is worth, including when the honest answer is less than you hoped, and including when the honest answer is that you don't need a lawyer at all.

Personal Injury FAQs