FAQ

In Iowa, depending on the type and extent of your injury, some of the harms and losses that you may recover include your medical bills and lost wages. In other cases, you may be able to seek compensation for the loss of normal bodily function, pain, and suffering, including compensation for not being able to do some of the activities you enjoyed before the injury.

Iowa Workers’ Compensation Law requires employers, or their insurance companies, to pay specific benefits if you are injured at work. You have the right, under the law, to have your medical bills, prescriptions, mileage, and wages for the time spent at a doctor’s appointments paid. You are entitled to payment for the time that a doctor keeps you off work due to your work injury. If your injury results in permanent impairment to your body, you may be entitled to payments for that impairment, even after you return to work. For certain types of work injuries, you may be entitled to payments if it has caused you to lose the ability to work or compete for jobs that you could do before the injury.

In Iowa, the employer or its insurance company has the right to choose which doctor you see for your work injury, though there are limitations regarding this decision. Their choice of a physician, or authorizing a medical procedure recommended by a physician, must be done reasonably and in a timely manner.

All claims for personal injury and workers’ compensation must be brought within a certain period of time. That time period is called a statute of limitations and generally cannot be waived. If your case is not filed within the statutory period, the person or company breaking the rules in our community will not be held accountable for their actions and you will not be able to get the relief you are entitled to under the law.

No, we do not charge a fee for the first meeting. We are happy to meet with you and answer any questions you may have and there is no obligation to hire us during that first consultation.

Most people can’t afford to pay $100-200 per hour like insurance companies pay their corporate defense lawyers. Our fees are based on what we recover for you. This is known as a contingency fee. If we do not get anything for you, then we do not get paid for our time helping you. If we are successful, then our fees are generally one-third of what we get for you.

Communication is very important in achieving a successful lawyer-client relationship. If there are changes or developments that might affect the legal issues your lawyer is working on, you should tell him or her about it. On the other hand, you have the right to know the status of your case, and your lawyers should be willing to spend time informing you about developments in your case.

Of course not; however, at Fitzsimmons Law Firm, we will do our best to hold companies and people who break safety rules accountable for injuring people in our community. As a result, we will do our best to obtain for you what is fair under the law.