Kansas City | Johnson County | Kansas | Missouri | Personal Injury & Wrongful Death Attorneys/Lawyers/Law Firm
Kansas City & Johnson County personal injury/wrongful death law firm
The attorneys and staff at The Law Offices of Jeremiah Johnson, LLC represent people injured in auto accidents, job accidents, and other accidents due to the negligence or fault of another.
If you have suffered personal injuries or lost a loved one due in an auto accident or due to the fault of another in Johnson County, Kansas City, Kansas or Missouri, it is imperative that your rights be protected by a personal injury/wrongful death attorney immediately. Our law office's wrongful death and personal injury lawyers represent people injured in auto accidents throughout Kansas and Missouri including Kansas City, Johnson County, Wyandotte County, Leavenworth County, and Jackson County. The attorneys and staff if our law office also provide wrongful death representation to the estates and families of those killed due to negligent driving or actions by another person or party.
This law office has successfully represented people injured in auto accidents, work accidents, and other injuries due to the fault of another in Kansas City, Olathe, Overland Park, Leawood, Lenexa, and throughout the Johnson County and Kansas City metro areas. We take pride in recovering every dollar our clients deserve and we work hard to make sure that we pursue every avenue of recovery in all of our personal injury and wrongful death cases. We utilize a variety of strategies learned from years of experience to accomplish our goals. Our firm has successfully recovered millions of dollars for clients injured in a broad range of accidents, including auto accidents in Kansas City and Johnson County, including injuries sustained at work, intentional tort injuries, and other civil tort claims.
Insurance companies have thousands of attorneys, adjustors, and other staff working hard to represent their interests. These insurance companies employ a variety of strategies designed to minimize policy payouts, blame policyholders for injuries and deny the existence of valid insurance coverage in personal injury/wrongful death cases. Before you agree to talk to an insurance company or representative of another party, be sure to have an experienced personal injury lawyer on your side. You owe it to yourself to get an aggressive Kansas City & Johnson County personal injury attorney working on your behalf!
The lawyers and staff in our law firm have successfully recovered millions of dollars in Kansas City, Johnson County, Wyandotte County, and Jackson County personal injury & wrongful death cases:
1. Auto accident legal representation in Johnson County and Kansas City - Our past successes in Kansas City and Johnson County auto accident cases includes numerous "policy limits" settlements in a variety of accident types. A "policy limits" offer represents the maximum amount an insurance company is subject to pay in a given case. Settling a case for "policy limits," usually means that our personal injury clients are able to get every dollar they could at trial, without the risk, expense, and time involved in a trial. We have secured "policy limits" settlements before a lawsuit is filed, after a lawsuit was filed, and on the eve of a jury trial in Johnson County District Court.
Our attorneys have successfully represented Kansas City, Johnson County, and Wyandotte County residents in rollover accidents, rear end collisions, intersection wrecks where the negligent driver ran a red light, head on collisions, and single vehicle accidents involving a "phantom driver." These auto accidents have taken place in good weather and bad, day and night. No matter what the circumstances surrounding a auto accident injury or death are, the attorneys in our law office understand the steps necessary to maximize the value of a case. We work hard to represent our personal injury and wrongful death clients to insure that they get every dollar they deserve in their lawsuit.
At the Law Offices of Jeremiah Johnson, LLC, we also strive to be accessible to our clients, meaning that we take steps to insure that we communicate effectively with out clients. This includes sending our Kansas and Missouri clients regular case updates, copies of important court pleadings, and other important case details. More importantly, we answer the phone and call people back. The most common complaint we hear about lawyers is that "they won't call me back." The lawyers in our personal injury firm return most calls within a few hours and nearly every call within 24 hours. For more information about our auto accident representation, visit our auto accident pages for Kansas City and Johnson County auto wrecks.
2. Commercial vehicle & heavy truck injuries and wrongful deaths - Commercial vehicles include heavy trucks such as 18 wheelers/semi-trailers, large buses, and other large vehicles. These vehicles have the potential to inflict catastrophic injuries due to their sizes and weights which are often 20 or 30 times as much as the average passenger car. When a commercial vehicle strikes a passenger car, the collision often results in serious injury or death for the vehicle's occupants. Commercial vehicle drivers are required to follow state and federal commercial vehicle regulations which govern their operation and dictate that they carry insurance policies with limits that are usually $1 million or more.
Commercial vehicle accident cases are often highly complicated and require a law office and attorneys with knowledge of the state and federal laws for commercial vehicles. A lawyer working on a Kansas City or Johnson County commercial vehicle/heavy truck case also needs to be able to sift through the complicated evidence that is usually involved in trucking personal injury/wrongful death cases. This evidence includes data from the truck's data recorders (see more about these recorders on our trucking/commercial vehicle page), the damage to the vehicles themselves, eyewitness reports, coroner reports, and reports from medical and law enforcement personnel.
This office has represented the families of victims killed by commercial vehicles in both Federal Court for the District of Kansas and Wyandotte County District Court. We recently secured a "policy limits" settlement in a commercial vehicle case which involved the death of a Kansas City man.
3. Intentional torts committed by one person and injuring another person - An intentional tort is an intentional and injurious act committed by one person upon another. An easily recognized example is a battery, where one person strikes another. This law offices has secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement for Kansas City area intentional tort cases.
Experienced readers may recognize that the States of Kansas and Missouri do not allow insurance companies to insure for intentional torts, and thus wonder how we were able to convince an insurance company to pay the "policy limits" in an intentional tort case. The answer is complicated, but the short version is that we successfully crafted our lawsuit, discovery, and depositions to leave open the possibility that the intentional act might have been a negligent act. By crafting and pursuing our case in such a manner we were able to trigger the possibility of a "bad faith" claim against the insurance company, should the jury agree with out theory of the case. Thus we were able to collect a large amount of money for our injured client who had previously been told by 12 different attorneys that, while he had a great case factually, there was no way to collect any money and that they could not take his case.
Please review our website for more information about your personal injury or wrongful death case. When you're ready to speak to an attorney about your case, call us at 866-656-1268 or email Jeremiah at Jeremiah@kcatty.com.
Our Law Office Staff:
Jeremiah Johnson:
I have been working for plaintiff's law firms representing people in personal injury and wrongful death cases since 2003. I formed the Law Offices of Jeremiah Johnson LLC in 2006 and have been practicing personal injury and wrongful death law in Kansas and Missouri every day since opening the office. I have settled dozens of auto accident, wrongful death, and negligence cases in both Kansas and Missouri, with the total amount of settlements in the millions of dollars.
I believe in taking and working on every Kansas or Missouri personal injury/wrongful death case with the assumption that the case will go to trial. Although the vast majority of personal injury and wrongful death cases end up settling before trial, I believe this approach allows us to get better offers for our clients, and of course it means that we will be better prepared for trial than an attorney who is forced to scramble to put together a trial plan at the last second. We have seen offers immediately go from $10,000 to $300,000 once opposing counsel realized we were ready to take the case to trial.
I have taken a large range of cases to trial in front of judges and juries in both State and Federal Court. Our office's philosophy is to be ready to take any of our cases to trial in the most advantageous jurisdiction possible. I feel that our trial experience helps us demand and recover more money for our Johnson County, Kansas City, Kansas, and Missouri personal injury and wrongful death clients because we can hold a defendant's or insurance companies feet to the fire. It is easy to realize that a defendant or insurance company is going to de-value a case with an attorney who is afraid or unwilling to take a case to trial - if they know the attorney is afraid to present the case to a jury, why would the defendants and insurance companies pay?
I strive to know all of the ever-changing law that affects our clients cases and I, along with my employees, also maintain a number of contacts in the litigation defense industry, the insurance industry, and the medical industry. These contacts help us keep abreast of ever changing policies and practices which allows us to maximize the recoveries (settlements or judgments) for our Kansas and Missouri personal injury and wrongful death clients. We know their tactics and we know how to use them to our clients' advantages.
I also strive to ensure that everyone in our client remembers rule #1 - that we are representing our clients, not ourselves. This rule may sound simple enough, but you would be surprised how many law firms and attorneys simply treat clients as "files" and not people with unique and important cases.
We strive to be available to our clients. We do not screen calls in our office. If you call for one of us and we are here and available, we will make time to talk to you. If we are not in the office, we return most calls in a few hours and nearly every call within 24 hours. We also reply to almost every email with 24 hours. We send our clients copies of court pleadings and other important documents to insure that they are up to date with their cases. We also provide our cell phone numbers to our personal injury and wrongful death clients so that they can reach us after hours. Our goal is to make sure that every client is represented as well as possible.
Scott McFall:
Scott came to our law office after working at a large defense firm in Kansas City, MO until 2007. His former employer represented individual and corporate defendants in cases ranging from automobile accidents, to wrongful death claims, to product liability claims. Some of these cases included claims for hundreds of millions of dollars. Scott's experience working on a number of different cases at this firm has given him insight into how large defense prepare and defend high-value cases, how to best deal with these cases and law firms, and where a large firm or their clients may be vulnerable. Scott's tools have proven highly valuable to our firm on many occasions and will continue to pay dividends in the future.
Prior to practicing defense law for the large firm in Kansas City, MO, Scott worked at a smaller law office that specialized in representing people in Appellate Court proceedings. He not only took part in the investigation and research for the appeals, but he also wrote a number of appellate briefs and arguments. Such experience is rare has given Scott tremendous insight in helping our firm focus our litigation efforts on representing our clients in a manner which we hope will prevent the opposing party from seeking or receiving appellate relief.
While working in our law office on wrongful death, personal injury, and other cases in Kansas and Missouri, Scott has represented our clients in a wide range trials in front of judges and juries as co-counsel or lead counsel in State and Federal Court. Scott shares in our office's willingness to take any of our cases to trial and enjoys presenting our cases to the Court and the jury.
Katie Sellers:
Katie is our office manager and helps with every part of the daily operations in our office. While Katie may be young, she has been valuable to our firm and performs at a level far beyond what is typically expected for someone her age.
Katie's duties include assisting in discovery and case investigations, overseeing the spreadsheets and timelines utilized in our personal injury and wrongful death cases, insuring that our files are properly maintained, preparing our personal injury/wrongful death cases for trial and managing the office. Katie has traveled to both Federal and State court to assist our attorneys with large or complex trials.
Katie is currently on track to earn her law degree in 2014.
Meghan Baxter:
Meghan is an Olathe native who is currently taking classes to earn her paralegal certificate. She left a job in the claims department at a national insurance agency to work in our Olathe law office. Meghan's insurance industry experience has allowed her to provide insight in a number of our personal injury/wrongful death cases.
Meghan has proven to be very good at all aspects of her job. Meghan's duties include preparing and maintaining our files, assisting with investigation and trial, corresponding with clients, and helping prepare cases for trial.
Callie Burton:
Callie previously worked as a legal assistant at another law firm for 3 years before coming to our office to work as a legal assistant. Callie's experience at her prior office, as well as her extensive knowledge of the medical care industry has made her an extremely valuable addition to our office, especially as we put together medical files.
Callie's duties include organizing and interpreting the large volumes of medical documents we often see in our personal injury and wrongful death cases, corresponding with clients, assisting with case investigations, and assisting in trial preparation.
Brooke Bashaw
Brooke worked at an insurance underwriter agency before coming to our law office. Her experience has helped us understand the inner workings of the insurance industry and has made her a very capable office worker. Brooke has quickly leared to assist in all of our office tasks and is especially good with client contact.
Kaitlyn Charlesworth
Kaitlyn is an Olathe native and is a very detail oriented worker who has quickly become an integral part of our staff. She has become excellent at assisting with pleadings and managing our law office's extensive files.
Callie Burton
Callie comes to us with experience in other law offices as well as in the nursing field. Her experience in the medical field is extremely helpful in interpreting medical records in our wrongful death and personal injury cases.
LuLu
LuLu is our office mascot. She is a bullmastiff and is present at the office nearly every day.
Additional Information and General Overview of the Statutes of Limitations for filing a Personal Injury Lawsuit
The following overview is provided as an accessible reference guide for time limitations that may or may not apply to your case. The legal start date of a statute of limitations is dependent on a variety of factors (including but not always limited to: the date the alleged action occurred or the date the alleged action was discovered).
Call our law office at (913) 764-5010 to speak to an attorney about the specifics of your case.
Kansas
Actions limited to be filed within ONE YEAR:
- Libel or Slander
- Assault, Battery, Malicious Prosecution, or False Imprisonment
- Statutory Penalty or Forfeiture
- Discharge or Threat to Discharge an employee as a result of jury service
Actions limited to be filed within TWO YEARS:
- Trespassing
- Taking, Detaining or Injuring Personal Property
- Fraud
- Loss of Certain Rights (not arising on contract)
- Wrongful Death
- Ionizing Radiation Injury
- The Rendering of or Failure to Render Professional Services by a Health Care Provider (not arising on contract)
Actions limited to be filed within THREE YEARS:
- All actions upon contracts, obligations or liabilities expressed or implied but not in writing
- An action upon a liability created by a statute other than a penalty or forfeiture
Actions limited to be filed within FIVE YEARS:
- An action upon any agreement, contract or promise in writing
- An action brought on a covenant of warranty contained in any deed of conveyance of land, after there shall be a final decision against the title of the covenanter in such deed
- An action upon the official bond or undertaking of an executor, administrator, conservator, sheriff, or any other officer, or upon the bond or undertaking given in attachment, injunction, arrest or in any case required by statute
- An action for relief, other than the recovery of real property
Other Aspects of Kansas Statutes of Limitation for Personal Injury Suits
Persons Under Legal Disability (Minors, Incapacitated and Imprisoned Persons):
- Except as provided in K.S.A. 60-523, if any person entitled to bring an action, at the time of the action or at any time during which the statute of limitations is running, is less than 18 years old, an incapacitated person or imprisoned for a term less than such person's natural life, such persons shall be entitled to bring such action within one year after the person's disability is removed, except that no action shall be commenced by or on behalf of any person under the disability more than eight years after the time of the act causing the action. However, if an imprisoned person has access to the court for purposes of bringing an action, such person shall not be deemed to be under legal disability.
- If any person entitled to bring an action dies during the continuance of an disability specified above and no determination is made of the cause of the action accrued to the deceased, any person entitled to a claim from, by or under the deceased may commence such action within one year after the deceased's death, but in no event shall any such action be commenced more than eight years beyond the time of the act causing the legal action.
Possible 6 Month Extension:
- If the plaintiff fails in any action commenced within due time for reasons other than upon the merits of the case, and the time limited for the case has expired, the plaintiff may commence a new action with six months after such failure if the cause of the action survives. If the plaintiff has died, his or her representatives may commence a new action if the cause of the action survives.
Commencement of Action:
- A civil action is commenced the time of filing a petition with the clerk of the court, if service of process is obtained or the first publication is made for service by publication within 90 days after the petition is filed, except that the court may extend that time and additional 30 days upon a showing of good cause by the plaintiff. A civil action is also commenced at the time of service of process or first publication if the service of process or first publication is not made within the time specified by the provision
- If service of process or first publication purports to have been made but is later adjudicated to have been invalid due to any irregularity in form or procedure or any defect, the action shall still be deemed to have been commenced within the applicable time if valid service is obtained or first publication is made within 90 days after that adjudication. The court may extend that time by an additional 30 days upon showing of good cause by the plaintiff.
- The filing of an entry of appearance shall have the same effect as service. Written contact with the court by a defendant or attorney for a defendant evoking the protection for such defendant under the soldier's or sailor's civil relief act shall not be deemed an entry of appearance by the court.
Missouri
Actions limited to be filed within ONE YEAR:
- Suits Against the Department of Corrections
Actions limited to be filed within TWO YEARS:
- Libel and/or Slander
- Assault and/or Battery
- False Imprisonment
- Criminal Conversation
- Malicious Prosecution
- Actions brought under section 290.140, RSMo
- Unpaid Wages, Overtime or Damages as a result of unpaid wages
- Suits Against Health Care Providers (physicians, hospitals, dentists, nurses, optometrists, podiatrists, pharmacists, chiropractors, physical therapists, and any other healthcare service or employee) for malpractice, negligence, error or mistake. Two years is either from the date the service was provided or from the date of discovery of the alleged negligence. In the case of a minor under 18, the minor shall have until his twentieth birthday.
Actions limited to be filed within THREE YEARS:
- Suits Against a Sheriff, Coroner or Other Officer
- Wrongful Death
Actions limited to be filed within FIVE YEARS:
- Suits upon Contracts, Obligations or Liabilities, expressed or implied, except those mentioned in section 516.110 RSMo
- Liability created by a statute other than a penalty or forfeiture
- Trespassing
- Taking, Detaining or Injuring Personal Property
- Fraud
Other Aspects of Missouri Statutes of Limitation for Personal Injury Suits
Minors and Mentally Incapacitated:
- Filing of suit may be delayed if at the time of the action the plaintiff was under 21 years of age or was mentally incapacitated.
One Year to Re-File:
- If any action shall have been commenced within the times respectively prescribed in sections 516.010 to 516.370, and the plaintiff therein suffer a nonsuit, or, after a verdict for him or her, the judgment be arrested, or after a judgment for him or her the same be reversed on appeal or error, such plaintiff may commence a new action within one year. If the plaintiff dies and the cause of action remains his or her heirs, executors or administrators may commence a new action within the time allowed.
