Practice Areas of Glasheen, Valles & Inderman Injury Lawyers

Attorneys become Board Certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in Austin, Texas, which was created by, and operates under the authority of the Supreme Court of Texas. The Board’s Members are appointed by the President of the State Bar of Texas. The Board administers the program by which a lawyer may earn a certificate of special competence in a particular field of law.

Kevin Glasheen is Board Certified in Personal Injury and Civil Trial Law.

Potential defendants are usually covered by insurance. The insurance companies are notified immediately when an accident occurs, and they usually hire attorneys and expert witnesses to investigate the claim. It is important that witnesses be interviewed as soon as possible and evidence be preserved. Witnesses will often be more difficult to locate or will have a poor memory if they are interviewed much later after the accident has occurred. Evidence such as machinery parts or skid marks on the highway will disappear unless preserved quickly. Insurance companies have insurance adjusters who will contact you and try to be friendly. You should not trust the statements that insurance adjusters make to you. They are not working for you and will sometimes make misleading statements in an effort to trick you into resolving your case. Insurance adjusters also might record your conversations with them and use your statements against you in order to try to save money for the insurance companies.

The main thing we try to impress upon people is that it’s never too early to talk to an attorney, and it’s always too late. By that we mean that speaking with an attorney very soon after a crash or other accident in no way will harm you. Along the same lines, the longer you try to handle a claim on your own or delay hiring competent counsel, irreparable damage can be done in the form of recorded statements given to the insurance companies and evidence not being preserved. There is no risk or fee for speaking with an attorney and arranging an initial consultation.

Whether a case goes to trial depends on dozens of factors, including your damages, the amount of insurance available, and the circumstances of the case. However, generally speaking, approximately 98% of personal injury cases settle without going to trial.

Personal injury claims are usually resolved by either settlement or by a jury. When a case is settled, it is the client’s decision of whether or not to accept a settlement offer. The lawyer will advise the client as to the potential value of the claim. Lawyers evaluate the potential value of a claim by predicting what a jury would do based on experience with similar claims.A jury can consider all sorts of damages in a personal injury case including medical expenses in the past and in the future, loss of earnings in the past and in the future as a result of the injury, physical pain and mental anguish in the past and in the future, compensation for impairment – that is loss of use, and disfigurement damages. The jury has discretion in awarding the sums. We can give you advice on the value of your claim based on our experience with some of our claims and similar jury results.

If you lose at trial, or if your recovery is not as high as it should be, we can discus filing an appeal, which typically happens if the judge makes a mistake during the trial. With respect to expenses and fees, you will owe us nothing for our time, attorney’s fees or our expenses if we lose your case at trial.

You always have the right to fire your attorney; however, if you have signed a contract with that attorney, you may have to pay that attorney a fee. The answer to that question is very fact-specific, because one of the considerations as to whether you owe the first attorney a fee is whether you have “good cause” for firing that attorney.

What we recommend is, if you are unhappy with your current attorney, try to communicate that to them first. Let them know why you are unhappy so that they have a chance to remedy the problem. If you cannot get in contact with your attorney, or if they are unable or unwilling to remedy the problem, then your next step would be to consult another personal injury attorney. The new attorney can advise you about your contract with the first attorney. If you have “good cause” for firing the first attorney, and you have made an unsuccessful, good-faith effort to resolve the problems with the first attorney, then your new attorney will likely be able to resolve any claims from the first attorney. Such a resolution typically involves the old attorney and the new attorney dividing the contingency fee between themselves so that you do not have to pay double fees.