Jackson, MS Rental Car Accidents

The first thing you should do following a rental car collision in Hinds County is call the police. Officers from the Jackson Police Department – located at 327 East Pascagoula Street, Jackson, Mississippi 39205 – may be the ones dispatched to the scene. Their phone number is 601-960-1234. After the officers have taken statements from all parties involved and recorded their assessment of the damages, obtaining a copy of the official police report could strengthen your claim. Next, you should exchange insurance and contact information with the other driver. It can also be beneficial to your case if you photograph the scene of the crash and any objective injuries you sustained.

When one is seeking damages after a car accident, the plaintiff will often have to establish the other driver’s negligence – which could be anything from distracted driving to drunk driving – by proving that a duty of reasonable care owed to the plaintiff by the defendant was breached, resulting in the plaintiff’s injuries, since the State of Mississippi places the burden of proof on the party pursuing damages. However, the involvement of a rental car in a collision can possibly make things tricky. When the legalities regarding rental cars and their insurance companies come to the forefront, you may find yourself bewildered like many would be in your situation. That is one of the many instances in which hiring a car accident attorney in the Jackson, MS, area can be invaluable.

Once you have dealt with the aforementioned complexities and liability has been established, you can shift your focus to damages. In Mississippi, compensatory damages are designed to make the plaintiff whole, as if the collision never happened to begin with, and normally fall into two categories: economic damages, which compensate for property damage, lost wages, medical bills, and other monetary losses, and non-economic damages, which attempt to quantify more subjective, intangible losses and compensate for them. Intangible losses may include loss of consortium, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, pain and suffering, and mental anguish.