What to Do After an Injury Accident in Cherry Hill

Wednesday afternoon on Haddonfield Road. Car runs a red light at Route 70, hits Marcus on the driver’s side.

He got out. Checked on the other driver. Called the police. Exchanged insurance info. Shoulder hurt but the car still ran so he drove himself to his mother’s house two miles away.

Iced it. Went to bed.

Friday morning he couldn’t lift his arm past his chest. MRI. Torn rotator cuff. Surgery scheduled. Three months off work.

Thursday afternoon, the day before he even saw a doctor, the other driver’s insurance company had already called with a number: $6,500. Marcus thought his shoulder was badly bruised. $6,500 felt like real money for a bruise.

He had no idea what he was about to give up permanently. Nobody told him until he’d almost already done it.

The No-Fault Thin

New Jersey is a no-fault state. Most people know this the way they know trivia they’ve never had to use.

Your own insurance pays your medical bills first through Personal Injury Protection, PIP, regardless of who caused the crash. You don’t initially go after the other driver for medical treatment. Minimum PIP is $15,000 per person per accident. Whether you bought more than that matters right now.

Here’s the piece with real consequences: when you bought your car insurance, you chose between two lawsuit thresholds. Most people don’t remember this choice because it was buried in the policy and it lowered the premium. That’s all that registered at the time.

If you chose the limitation on lawsuit threshold, the verbal threshold, you can only sue the at-fault driver if your injuries meet specific criteria. Permanent injury, significant scarring, displaced fracture, loss of a body part. Minor soft tissue injuries typically don’t qualify. Which means depending on what you agreed to when you were just trying to save $40 a month, you may have no right to pursue the other driver at all.

Find the policy. Check the threshold. Tonight.

Marcus Went Friday

Two days after the crash. Those two days became the recurring theme of every conversation with the adjuster for months.

Go the same day. Not tomorrow. Not after the weekend. Not after you ice it and see.

The space between the crash and your first medical record is where the entire argument against your claim gets constructed. Every day without a doctor visit becomes a day someone points to and says: serious injuries get treated immediately.

Adrenaline masks real damage. Rotator cuff tears, spinal injuries, concussions, soft tissue problems, they don’t always declare themselves fully in the first few hours. Marcus felt like he had a bad bruise. He had surgery.

Go the same day. Tell the doctor you were in an accident, those specific words, so they appear in the record. Show up to every follow-up. Every referral. Gaps in treatment don’t communicate a busy schedule to an adjuster. They communicate recovery. Recovered patients cost less.

Write down how the injury affects your daily life while it’s happening. What you can’t do. Sleep. Things cancelled. Do it for yourself because six months from now when someone needs specific details about your recovery you won’t remember any of it.

At the Scene

Both vehicles photographed before anything moves. Every angle. The road, the intersection, skid marks, debris, your visible injuries, weather, lighting. More than seems necessary.

Witness names and direct phone numbers before anyone walks away. People leave faster than expected. Once gone, effectively gone.

Get the other driver’s full information yourself: name, address, phone, license number, plate, insurance company, policy number. Don’t just photograph their card and assume that’s enough. Verify it’s all legible before you drive away.

Voice record what happened while it’s still accurate. What direction both vehicles were traveling, road conditions, what the other driver said out loud. What feels completely clear right now becomes unreliable in days.

The Police Report and the Deadline Nobody Mentions

Get a police report even if the accident seems minor. If officers didn’t respond, file a crash report with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. Read the report when it’s available. Officers get details wrong sometimes. Wrong direction of travel, wrong description of what was said. Errors travel through the entire claim and can only be fixed after you catch them.

On deadlines: two years from the accident date to file a personal injury lawsuit. Sounds fine. Real investigation, record collection, expert consultations, and negotiations that drag eat through it faster than people expect.

The one that quietly ends cases: government entity involved, city vehicle, county road with documented problems, broken signal with complaints on file, you have 90 days from the accident date to file a tort claim notice. Not two years. Ninety days. Miss it and you’re almost certainly done with that claim entirely.

Most people find out this deadline exists after it’s already passed.

Thursday’s Call

Before Marcus had seen a doctor. Friendly voice, number prepared: $6,500.

He didn’t know his shoulder was torn yet. $6,500 felt real.

They called that fast because they want a settlement before treatment is finished, before the full picture is clear, before he found out surgery was coming. Sign the release Thursday and whatever felt reasonable while he was still rattled from Wednesday is what he’s permanently stuck with.

Don’t give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement without an attorney. Don’t sign anything. Two decisions in the first two days that protect more of the case than most of what happens in all the months afterward.

Fault and What Adjusters Do With It

Modified comparative fault in New Jersey. 51% threshold. More than half responsible and you get nothing. Found 30% at fault and recovery drops by 30%.

Small shifts move real money. Adjusters know this and they push it. Speed, whether you signaled, whether you could have done something differently. These arguments come up on thin evidence because they work.

Tell your attorney everything. The uncomfortable parts specifically. What you hold back surfaces later at the worst possible moment.

What’s Available

If injuries clear the threshold or you have the unlimited right to sue: medical bills, future treatment your doctor says you’ll need, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, every out-of-pocket cost the accident created.

Pain and suffering, emotional distress, losing things you could do before, the effect on your marriage and family. New Jersey doesn’t cap these. Marcus’s non-economic damages exceeded his medical bills.

Justia’s personal injury resources explain what’s compensable in plain language without a sales pitch. Read them before talking to anyone.

Property damage is a separate claim. Total loss valuations run low. Pull current South Jersey listings for your exact year, make, model, and mileage and use them to push back. Read every document before signing anything. Some property damage settlements include language releasing future injury claims. Every word before the pen touches paper.

Before deciding on anyone, look at verified information outside of what a firm publishes about itself. The Super Lawyers profile gives you independently verified background worth reviewing. Cherry Hill personal injury lawyers at Grungo Law handle cases across South Jersey with attorneys who understand how the no-fault system works in practice and how local insurers actually negotiate.

Marcus didn’t take the $6,500. He called an attorney first.

He recovered enough to cover the surgery, three months of lost wages, and the limitations he dealt with for most of the following year. His case wasn’t complicated. What changed was simple: someone told him what his damages actually were before he signed anything.

He stopped accepting $6,500 as the answer.

The first offer is almost never the fair one and the decisions made in the first two days shape most of what’s possible afterward.

Author: Leland Bengtson

As a journalist, Leland Bengtson dedicated most of his career to law reporting. His greatest satisfaction is to convey legal matters to the public in a language that they can understand. He is active on various platforms and media outlets, writing about common legal issues that people confront every day. While medical malpractice is his strong suit, Leland covers plenty of other topics, including personal injury cases, family law, and other civil and even criminal legal matters.