Wisconsin Personal Injury Legal Questions

       The answer to your question is yes. The lawyer doesn't own you, you own (if you will) the lawyer. The lawyer works for you, not the other way around. You have the right to consult with another attorney, if you wish about your pending accident case, and can even go one step further, and actually hire a new lawyer to replace the lawyer you originally hired. What happens in that case, is the 1/3 fee agreeement that you signed with the first lawyer, (the 1/3 fee) gets split between the 2 law firms. You have the right to substitute your injury lawyer at any time. If there is pending litigation, the substitution would also require court approval.... Read More

You have several different bases for damages. One of them is lost wages, and you could certainly try to get compensated for lost profits on the woodworking side line. This is a little harder to prove but if you have good records you probably can do so. Other areas of damage would be loss of enjoyment of particular activities that you cannot do. Another would be pain And suffering. And no doubt if there are others. You would be well advised to retene unexperienced personal injury lawyer in your locality. It's almost always worth the investment. Good luck... Read More

Obviously you were treated very poorly like lots of other defendants in this great country who are arrested for crimes they did not commit. But, there is not necessarily a time limit for booking an arrest least not requiring it to be done in less than 13 hours. (Although the best practice is much more prompt booking.) But it does not seem that you were denied any constitutional right. Being denied medical attention for a psychological issue is also, to say the least, mean of the police. But unless you are going into seizures or losing consciousness, or bleeding heavily, they are not likely to believe that your medical problem requires prompt medical attention. After all, anyone can say they are suffering from severe anxiety whether it is true or not, and almost anyone awaiting booking is anxious to some degree. I don't see any civil rights violation, but I do see reprehensible behavior on the part of the police. You might want to send a clearly written and detailed complaint to the Police Review commission for your municipality. Good Luck... Read More

You can request anything. The problem is that if you make such a request early in the development of the claim, the insurer will know that it can settle cheap. That may not be in your best interests. But if your needs are as great as you describe, then you might take the risk so long as you are certain that the facts demonstrate that the other party was at fault. Your child may have an insurable interest in your mother's life, but unless you are named the beneficiary or are married to the mom, you might not Your best bet is to consult an experienced personal injury lawyer in the locality where the accident occurred. I am sorry for your loss.... Read More

It is a very fact-specific matter. The mere administration to a patient of painkillers (or other drugs) is not a complete disqualification of what the person signed. IF an opponent of the document could show by witnesses and medical/nursing charts that the patient was not lucid at the time of signing, there is a chance of presenting the enforcement of the document.... Read More

You must retain a lawyer experienced in commercial law. The considerations in determining how to proceed are very many, and strongly fact-driven. Quite often, disputes between partners are determined in court by an action for an accounting, or for partition of the business property, or for dissolution of the partnership. (In the midst of such a legal action, the partners may reach some sort of settlement.) If your partnership agreement calls for arbitration, then that is where you should go. Find a good lawyer.... Read More

If you had liability insurance, notify your insurance company immediately that you are being sued; they will defend the lawsuit and provide an attorney for you, without charge. If you did not have insurance and you are being sued, you can consider hiring a private civil litigation lawyer in your own. You will be required to pay an advance retainer and be billed per hour for the work. If the amount in controversy is a serious amount of money, you may also want to consider the option of talking to a bankruptcy lawyer to see if the obligation or judgment is dischargeable in bankruptcy court.... Read More

That is horrible what happened to your child. Your post doesn't indicate who your child was with when all this happened, was it a private person or in some type of day care center? You would need to investigate if the person or day care center has adequate assets or income that would make it make sense financially to consider a lawsuit. Insurance probably wouldn't apply as intentional acts are routinely excluded under liability policies.... Read More

The rule about 'defects' in real estate is that the seller is obliged to notify you about 'latent' defects: i.e. those which you would not notice on a visit or lay-person's inspection of the house. The seller need not notify you about 'manifest' defects those which you would see upon such a visit. But can this woman pay a judgment if you won it? In any event, this might prove to be a small-claims case. In Wisconsin that means damages of no more than $10,000.00. Be ready to document with witnesses, photographs, and any other proof you may have, that the bedbugs had infested the house as of the time you moved in. And find some means of showing that the seller knew about them. You will probably want to get a professional pest controller to do whatever it takes to clear the house of the bedbugs, which may mean fumigation in one or more sessions, cleaning, etc. These would be part of your damages. Your whole family should also get thorough physical examinations to determine if the bedbugs have caused any physical harm.... Read More

       Your son may have a case, but your post doesn't indicate whether he was injured or not; if he was not injured, there probably is no case; if he was injured, there may be a case. If the claim involves a municipality, as he was in custody, Wisconsin law requires that written notice of claim be personally served on the municipality within 120 days of the event, or the claim would be forever barred. Since there are strict time lines involved with making such a claim, it would be best to consult with an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as possible.... Read More

Your message is very confusing. Your question was whether the hospital could ban you, but you offer no facts as to what happened to you once you were in the hospital and whether they treated you, or refused to treat you. I also admittedly do not understand the incident you describe with the taxi driver and what relevance, if any, that has to do with what happened once you were at the hospital. I would like to be able to help you, but you need to be more specific about the circumstances of what transpired once you were in the hospital, in relation to the question you are asking.... Read More

Conveying your property for less than a fair equivalent value when you have creditors is a fraudulent transfer, and can be undone by the creditor. It also looks fishy as all get-out. You may not have much to worry about. Unless your equity in your home exceeds your state's exemption limit (which varies a lot from state to state: in Wisconsin it is $150,000 for a married couple), then the victim cannot take much from you. You do have the right to retain a lawyer to protect your interests in the event the final verdict, or settlement amount, should exceed your policy limits. But the majority of victims settle for policy limits. Unless the victim here suffered the very greatest amount of physical injury, he may well do the same thing. But consult your own lawyer with all the facts and details. His not wearing a helmet was certainly contributory negligent to his injuries.... Read More

I don't have a certain answer for you. My understanding was that a telephone call within Wisconsin could be recorded by one party but the contents could be used only in court, to impeach a witness who was lying about the contents of the call. Researching the question would be interesting, but I don't think this site intends to require lawyers to do 3 or 4 hours of research. This best I can advise with any certainty is that you should call a criminal defense lawyer in your locality.... Read More

The first step is to request copies of whatever surveillance video they have. If they won't give it to you, tell them that it is likely to become evidence in a court case and they must preserve it. Your son's criminal lawyer may be the best person to make this request, which should be made very soon, since the media in the camera are usually over-written. If your son does not yet have a lawyer, he needs a skilled criminal lawyer urgently.... Read More

You ask if the facts provide grounds for a civil action against the store or the government. Each state has different rules about how you can sue the government, and they all have pretty strict (and short) time limits. Keep in mind that the police have some privileges or immunities from prosecution if they acted in a good faith belief that their actions were lawful at the time they performed them. So, your best bet is to follow your criminal lawyer's referral to a civil lawyer whom he can recommend. Such a person is in the best position to advise you. He or she may also know of state laws which can compensate you in some degree for a wrongful arrest. To sue the store you must at a minimum show that they acted negligently, and in some states store employees are immune from a lawsuit based on their holding someone for an alleged retail theft. I feel for you. Find a good lawyer to evaluate a civil lawsuit. Good Luck.... Read More

Under Wisconsin law, if it is a claim against a municipality, you have to file a notice of claim & claim within 120 days of the date of occurrence by personally serving the claim, or the claim is otherwise barred. Since your accident occurred while you were incarcerated, I think that would arguably fall within the statute to be a claim against a municipality.... Read More

It's best to consult a lawyer in your locality. As a general matter, it's your money, and if someone receives it due to another person's mistake, it's still your money. IF the error arose as a result of the mistake of a bank employee, then very likely both the employee (meaning in this instance the bank, under the doctrine of respondeat superiorlet the boss answer), and the people who converted other people's money to their own use are jointly and severally liable. That means you should be able to collect from the bank OR the people who received the money, or part from each, but you may not receive double compensation.... Read More

Did you select a court date with insufficient time to enable you to have the lawsuit papers served? that is the only thing I can think of. You can bring a set of the papers  (small claims lawsuit) to the sheriff's department in the county where the defendant is residing and have them served that way. You cannot personally serve the papers. There are also private process server companies that do this type of work.... Read More

Wisconsin is a So-called comparative negligence state. That means that your negligence in leaving the car where it could be hit, must be compared with the negligence of the driver who hit it. Based only on the facts you provided, it looks like your Negligence is less then he is or hers. But in any dispute there are many facts that would need to be reviewed before someone could reach a rational conclusion. You would do well to locate a skilled personal injury lawyer, and consult him or her. Good luck.... Read More

Not necessarily a lost cause, but the defense that the patient did not look after herself is a frequent one now a days. The statutes of limitation differ from state to state. In Wisconsin it is three years from the negligent act, or from the date when a reasonably prudent person should have discovered that t negligence occurred. Locate a skilled personal injury lawyer. Good Luck... Read More