Car Accident Lawyers in Gulfport

Harrison County has two judicial districts, and only one is yours

This decides where your case starts. Harrison County is divided into a First and a Second Judicial District. Gulfport is the seat of the First, so a suit arising out of a Gulfport crash is lodged at the 23rd Avenue courthouse, while the Second District's courthouse in Biloxi handles matters arising on its side. Lodging in the wrong district spends time a claim has no reason to spend, so confirming the district is one of our first steps. A traffic citation from the same crash travels separately, to Gulfport Municipal Court.

Mississippi has no cliff edge on fault

Georgia and Tennessee each fix a point at which an injured person's own share of the blame ends the claim outright. Mississippi fixes none. Under Miss. Code § 11-7-15 the state applies pure comparative negligence: a percentage attributed to you lowers the award by that percentage and does nothing else. So an argument over whether you were twenty percent responsible or forty is an argument about the size of the recovery. It is not an argument about whether a recovery exists, which is the position an injured person in Georgia can find themselves in.

Memorial Hospital Gulfport and the coast's trauma centers

Memorial Hospital Gulfport on 13th Street carries a state Level II trauma center designation. Singing River Gulfport on Community Road, formerly Garden Park Medical Center, is a Level III center, and Memorial Hospital Biloxi provides emergency care on Reynoir Street. Which of them treated you determines where the records and the billing sit, and a serious injury can involve more than one. The medical file is the thing that establishes how badly you were hurt; a description of the injury is not a substitute, so we obtain the file in full from each facility.

Getting the crash report from Gulfport Police

City officers respond inside the Gulfport limits, and the department's Records Division releases accident reports in person for $7.50 covering the first fourteen pages, or online for $20 via the state crash-report system, with parking-lot collisions priced on a separate basis. Crashes on Interstate 10, US-49 and the other state highways around the city are worked by the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol, and the report is issued through the state. We identify the responding agency and request the report ourselves.

If the driver who hit you was uninsured or barely insured

Where the at-fault driver's cover falls short of what a serious injury actually costs, the uninsured and underinsured motorist provisions of your own policy may absorb the difference, and occasionally more than one policy is in play. We would rather establish the full coverage position early than discover late that the at-fault driver's limits were treated as the ceiling on your claim.

Three years to sue, far less to gather proof

Miss. Code § 15-1-49 permits three years from the collision to bring suit, a year longer than Georgia allows. Treat that as an outer boundary rather than a schedule. Footage, an unrepaired vehicle and a witness whose memory is still sharp all have a much shorter life than the filing right does, and nothing about starting early consumes any of the three years.

Speak to a Gulfport car accident lawyer

Our Gulfport office is at 2715 Bullis Avenue and we answer around the clock. A review of your case is free, and our fee depends on a recovery being made. Get in touch through the contact page or by telephone, whichever suits.

Speak with a Gulfport car accident attorney

Common questions

Harrison County has two courthouses. Which one handles my case?

The First Judicial District courthouse on 23rd Avenue in Gulfport, for a crash arising in the city. The Second District operates from Biloxi and covers matters arising there, so a Gulfport case lodged in Biloxi is lodged in the wrong place. We settle the district question before anything is submitted.

Who is even allowed to obtain my Mississippi crash report?

A narrow group. Miss. Code § 63-3-417 restricts release to people such as a party to the collision, that party's estate representative or next of kin, a legal representative, and the insurer. That is why a report request from an unrelated person goes nowhere. Gulfport Police release theirs through the Records Division, at $7.50 in person for the first fourteen pages or $20 online.

Mississippi gives me three years. Is there any reason not to wait?

Filing and proving are governed by different clocks. Three years is the outer limit for filing under Miss. Code § 15-1-49, but a repaired vehicle, recycled camera footage and a fading recollection will have thinned the evidence long before then. Beginning now protects the proof and costs you none of the filing period.