San Antonio Personal Injury Lawyer

Why Choose Our Personal Injury Lawyer in San Antonio?

The best personal injury lawyer in San Antonio is someone you can trust to fight for the compensation you’re owed — not someone who will push you into accepting an early settlement for a quick win, especially if it’s nowhere near enough to cover all your expenses.

When you choose Patino Law Firm, we guarantee:

• A completely free, no-obligation case review to determine if you have a claim and see if we’re right for you.
• You won’t pay a cent until we win your case. We don’t charge upfront fees, so you’ll never receive an unexpected bill.
• Experienced counsel dedicated to serving you. We work with real, hard-working people, not large, faceless corporations.
• A personal approach — from the moment you first meet your San Antonio personal injury lawyer, they’ll be by your side, always there to answer any questions and keep you updated while you focus on your recovery.

Cases Our San Antonio Personal Injury Attorney Can Help You With

Dr. Louis Patino and his personal injury team in San Antonio specialize in helping victims navigate the legal minefield when they’ve been in an accident that wasn’t their fault. Medical bills can pile up quickly, especially if your injuries worsen or you need further treatment. Then, you might need additional time off work or even be unable to return to the job you did before. On top of that, you might have chronic pain or depression following your accident. Whatever your situation, you deserve compensation for your losses.

Just some of the accident types our San Antonio personal injury lawyer can help you claim compensation for are:

• Car Accidents

• Traumatic Brain Injuries

• Motorcycle Accidents

• Spinal Cord Injuries

• Wrongful Death

• Construction Accidents

• Drunk Driving Accidents

• Truck Accidents
• Slips and Falls
• Dog Bites

Areas We Serve in Greater San Antonio

From our office in San Antonio, we serve the city and the entire San Antonio-New Braunfels metropolitan area, providing advice and representation to those injured in Schertz, Converse, and more:

• Converse
• Del Rio
• Hondo
• New Braunfels
• Pleasanton 
• San Antonio
• Schertz 
• Uvalde

Do You Have a Personal Injury Case?

Whether or not you have a case depends on whether you can prove your injuries occurred due to another person’s (or party’s) negligent or reckless behavior.

But what does that mean?

What Is Negligence?

To understand what negligence is, it helps to know what criteria your claim must meet. Having a successful personal injury claim requires you to meet a specific burden of proof. If you’ve watched any crime show or have a passing knowledge of the law, you might have heard the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt.” This is the legal standard in criminal cases, where if there is any doubt a defendant is guilty — assuming that doubt is reasonable — the jury must find them not guilty. This is a high burden, but fortunately, civil cases have a much lower standard.

In a personal injury claim, you need only prove the person was responsible for your accident “by a preponderance of the evidence” or, in other words, more likely than not. If the evidence is 51% in your favor, you win your case.

While this is easier to prove, you still need sufficient evidence that shows:

• Another party owed you a duty of care
• This party breached that duty of care by being negligent or reckless, and it caused your injury
• Your injury resulted in monetary injury (or damages).

The duty of care can vary depending on your situation. For example, if you’re on the road, other drivers owe you a duty of care to drive responsibly and follow state and federal laws. If they breach that duty of care and it causes your injury, you can hold them responsible. The other party can breach this through negligence or recklessness.

The main difference between reckless and negligent behavior is that the former involves taking a risk, knowing it may result in harm to others. Common examples of reckless behavior are speeding or driving while intoxicated. Negligence means acting carelessly or without thought for how their actions could impact another person. A negligent act may be something as simple as failing to check blind spots or following another vehicle too closely.

A personal injury case rests on the ability to prove that your injuries occurred due to someone else’s negligence or recklessness. But the law is complex, and the last thing you want to do while recovering from an accident is to spend hours researching and looking at legal precedents that are challenging to interpret. That’s why you should always consult our personal injury lawyer in San Antonio to determine if you have a case.

Awards and Recognition for Our San Antonio Accident Attorney

We’re proud to have received multiple awards and recognition from some of the most coveted organizations in our industry, including Best Trial Lawyer in America (2023) by The National Institute of Trial Lawyers, Best Law Firm (2023), and Litigator of the Year (2023) by the America Institute of Trial Lawyers, and the Best Business of 2023 by Three Best Rated.

What’s the Time Limit for Filing a Personal Injury Claim in Texas?

Each state has a time limit for how long you can take legal action after an accident. This time limit is called the statute of limitations. 

The statute of limitations for personal injury in Texas is two years from the date of your accident, although there are exceptions. If you wait too long to file a claim and the deadline passes, you won’t be able to recover compensation.

But just because you have a full two years doesn’t mean you should wait to speak to a personal injury attorney. The biggest advantage of filing early is that there’s no chance of the statute of limitations expiring, but there can also be strategic reasons for filing a lawsuit earlier. Evidence can be easier to gather early on, witnesses will be more likely to remember the accident, and negotiations can begin sooner, which means you may not have to wait as long for your settlement check.

What Damages Can Our Personal Injury Lawyer in San Antonio Recover?

Our San Antonio personal injury lawyer can help secure financial compensation for a range of damages. These typically fall into three categories.

Economic Damages

Economic damages are tangible, verifiable costs you’ve incurred due to your accident. These include:

• Medical expenses — such as ambulance costs, surgeries, follow-up appointments, medication, rehabilitation, and travel to and from the hospital. You can recover past expenses and the future costs you expect to incur if you need ongoing treatment.
• Lost wages and lost future income
• Property damage.

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages compensate you for the long-term impact of your injuries on your life. These are subjective, as you can’t put a number on them in the same way you can with medical bills and other provable costs.

Non-economic damages include:

• Pain and suffering
• Loss of consortium
• Scarring
• Emotional anguish
• Loss of enjoyment.

Punitive Damages

Punitive damages — also known as “exemplary damages” in Texas — is the third type of damages you may receive, but only if your case goes to trial. Punitive damages are reserved for particularly heinous conduct, such as driving under the influence, where the court desires to punish the defendant, set an example, or send a message to the community. Punitive damages are at the discretion of a jury.

How much you will ultimately receive in your personal injury claim depends on several factors, including who’s responsible for your accident, whether you contributed to your accident, the extent of your injuries, and the strength of your evidence. The best way to get an accurate estimate of how much you might recover is to contact our personal injury lawyer in San Antonio. We offer a free consultation, during which we’ll look at the details of your case and explore the damages you could recover.

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a San Antonio Personal Injury Attorney?

Every personal injury attorney operates differently. Some charge up-front fees, while others only charge if they win your case. At our law office, we operate on a contingency fee basis. This means we take on your case at no initial charge and instead receive a percentage of any settlement or judgment obtained. This allows you to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of our attorney without worrying about how you can afford it. In many cases, people who hire accident attorneys receive much higher payouts than those who DIY their claims — even after paying legal fees.

When you choose our San Antonio personal injury lawyer, we guarantee you will never pay up-front costs or be stung by unexpected bills. You will never pay any fees until we win your case, and we’ll let you know throughout the process how much those fees will be.