If another driver caused your crash, you can generally recover from their insurance for your full losses, including pain and suffering, once your injury crosses the Massachusetts serious-injury threshold. Until then, your own PIP coverage pays the first bills, whoever was at fault. The rest of this page explains how both work and what to do first.
If you were hurt in a car crash in Springfield, Westfield, Chicopee, Holyoke, Agawam, West Springfield, or anywhere in Western Massachusetts, you are likely already hearing from an insurance adjuster whose job is to close your claim cheaply. Our job is the opposite: to find out what your claim is actually worth, and to be ready to prove it in court.
Dunn & Phillips has represented injured people in the local courts since 1988, from our offices on Belmont Avenue in Springfield and our Personal Injury Law Center in Westfield. A new injury intake can reach a real person 24 hours a day at (413) 426-8657.
The first days after a crash
What you do in the first days shapes the whole claim. Get medical care even if you feel fine - adrenaline hides concussions and soft-tissue injuries, and a gap in treatment becomes the insurer's favorite argument. If pain, stiffness, headaches or dizziness show up days later, which is common with neck, back and head injuries, get checked then, and tell the doctor when the crash happened and when the symptoms started. Photograph the scene if you safely can, collect the other driver's information, and notify your own insurer promptly.
File a crash report. Under Massachusetts law (M.G.L. c. 90, § 26), the driver in a crash where anyone is injured or killed, or where there is more than $1,000 in damage to any one vehicle or other property, must file a Motor Vehicle Crash Operator Report with the Registry of Motor Vehicles within five days, and send a copy to the police department of the city or town where the crash happened: the Springfield Police Department for a crash in Springfield. Many people never hear about this rule until they have missed it. If you retain us, we prepare and file the report for you free of charge. If you do not, we will point you in the right direction: the form and the filing instructions are on Mass.gov.
Our step-by-step guide to the first 24 hours after a crash walks through all of it, and the free after-an-accident worksheet on this page gives you one place to keep the details while they are fresh.
How Massachusetts no-fault insurance really works
Massachusetts is a no-fault state, which confuses almost everyone at the worst possible time.
Every Massachusetts auto policy must include Personal Injury Protection (PIP). It pays up to $8,000 in total for your medical expenses, 75 percent of your lost wages, and replacement services, no matter who caused the crash. It covers expenses incurred within two years of the accident, and the claim must be presented to the insurer as soon as practicable, and in every case within two years, with a written description of your injuries and treatment. After that, the insurer is entitled to your cooperation in getting the medical records it needs. That is where the first bills go - not to the other driver's insurer - and coordinating PIP with your health insurance has traps of its own.
No-fault does not mean no one is responsible. You can pursue the at-fault driver for your full losses - including pain and suffering - once you cross the state's tort threshold: more than $2,000 in reasonable medical expenses, or an injury on the statute's own list - death, loss of a body member, permanent and serious disfigurement, qualifying loss of sight or hearing, or any fracture. The dollar figure alone understates who qualifies: a $900 emergency-room bill with a hairline fracture clears the threshold. Most crashes that put someone in a hospital cross it. Whether yours does, and what the claim is worth beyond it, is exactly what a lawyer should evaluate before any adjuster puts a number in front of you.
Fault, and the 51 percent rule
Massachusetts uses modified comparative negligence: you can recover as long as you were not more than 50 percent at fault, with your damages reduced by your percentage of the blame. If a jury finds you 20 percent at fault on a $100,000 claim, you recover $80,000. If it finds you 51 percent at fault, you recover nothing.
That rule is why fault fights are really money fights. An adjuster who moves your share of the blame from 10 percent to 40 percent has cut your recovery nearly in half without disputing a single medical bill. We investigate early - the police report, the scene, the vehicles, witnesses, and where it matters, crash reconstruction - because the version of events that gets locked in first tends to win.
The deadlines that end cases
- Three years from the crash to file most Massachusetts injury lawsuits, and three years for a wrongful death claim.
- Two years to present a written claim when the vehicle that hit you belongs to a city, town, or state agency - a deadline that surprises people because it arrives a full year before the ordinary one.
- Five days for the RMV crash report described above.
- PIP: present the claim to your insurer as soon as practicable, and in every case within two years of the crash.
Three years sounds longer than it is. Vehicles get repaired and scrapped, camera footage gets overwritten in weeks, and witnesses move. The strongest cases we bring are the ones where the investigation started early.
When the other driver denies it
Drivers dispute fault all the time, especially when there were no witnesses. A case does not need an eyewitness to be proven. Photographs of the vehicles and the scene, the police report, the damage pattern, nearby business and traffic cameras, and medical records showing how the injuries happened all tell the story. Where distraction is suspected, phone records can be obtained through the case. The evidence with the shortest life is camera footage, which is often recorded over within weeks, so the request for it should go out early.
If the driver drove off, report the crash to the police right away and write down everything you can remember about the vehicle. Your own uninsured motorist coverage typically applies to a hit-and-run.
What your claim can include
A fair settlement accounts for every cost of the crash: medical treatment past and future, lost wages and lost earning capacity, the cost of care you now need, and the pain, limitations, and disruption the injury brought into your life. Insurers resolve claims fast because fast claims settle before the full picture of treatment is known. We do not put a number on your case until your medical picture is clear enough to stand behind - and then we demand all of it.
How we build a car accident case
We are a Western Massachusetts firm, in the Hampden County courts week in and week out, and we prepare every case as if it will be tried. Insurers know which firms mean that. It changes the offers.
A small, collaborative team works your case with you - the same people from the first call to the resolution, reachable by name. We front the costs of building the case: records, experts, filings. You owe us nothing up front, nothing while the case runs, and nothing at all unless we recover for you.
If the honest answer is that you do not need a lawyer - some low-injury claims resolve fine without one - we will tell you that in the first conversation, free, before you have signed anything.