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Some years back I can recall agreeing to take on a new case...specifically, the case involved an elderly gentleman, who while carrying a wheel/tire from his bicycle to the repair shop to be fixed, was hit by a car while crossing the intersection on a green light.  The injured  man had been referred to me by another San Diego attorney who did not have a practice in personal injury law.  My injured client had spent 2 weeks in the hospital and was in the process of going through physical therapy as part of his recovery process.  So far so good, right?

Little did I suspect that my client had been staying up late at night watching television wherein the primary advertiser was a San Diego personal injury attorney who claimed to specialize in personal injury law involving bicycle or bike accidents!  My client saw this and figured, without speaking to me first, that he was a lot better off being represented by a San Diego personal injury lawyer with a bicycle accident specialty practice!  The next thing I knew I received a letter in the mail substituting me out of the case in favor the San Diego personal injury attorney who claimed, at least in his advertisements, that he was the one to go to if you were the victim of a  personal injury on your bike. 

The aforementioned client, obviously, was the victim of nothing more than clever advertising on the part of this lawyer.  All of which brings us to the very point of this blog entry, specifically, just what types of cases do personal injury lawyers handle and what do they, or should they, not handle?

Typically, most any capable personal injury attorney in San Diego county will handle just about any injury case caused by the negligence of another party.  A personal injury lawyer should be able to represent clients in any such injury situation, be it an  injury as the result of a car, motorcycle,  bicycle, or slip and fall event. Injury lawyers also will handle injuries from the result of a dog bite, or even injuries resulting from medical malpractice.  Legal malpractice cases, although typically involving a financial loss instead of a personal injury, are another type of case handled by many personal injury attorneys.  Naturally not every personal injury lawyer will handle every single type of case.  Also, not every personal injury attorney will be comfortable representing injured parties in every type of case even though it may be of a type that they normally will handle.

The primary point of this article, therefore, is that when one is seeking a personal injury attorney in San Diego one would be well advised, in my opinion, to seek out a tough, experienced injury attorney who you are comfortable with and normally without regard to the specific manner in which the personal injury happened.  A San Diego injury lawyer who is adept at handling car accident injury cases in San Diego will normally be just as capable representing injury victims in San Diego whose personal injury occurred in a motorcycle accident, slip and fall, or dog bite situation.