Pennsylvania Personal Injury Lawyer Fighting for Serious Injury Victims

A personal injury lawyer investigates who caused your injury, proves the full cost of it, and forces the responsible insurer to pay — by settlement if the number is right, by jury verdict if it is not. In Pennsylvania that work is governed by state law, so the lawyer must know the Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law, the Fair Share Act, county court rules and the local judges who apply them.

A personal injury case is any civil claim for physical or psychological harm caused by another person's or company's negligence, recklessness or intentional act. The main categories in Pennsylvania are:

• Commercial truck and tractor-trailer crashes — federal FMCSA hours-of-service and maintenance rules apply, and the carrier's insurer sends investigators to the scene the same day.
• Wrongful death and survival actions — brought under 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 8301 and 8302 for the family and for the estate.
• Motorcycle, car, pedestrian and bicycle collisions — shaped by Pennsylvania's limited/full tort election and by uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage.
• Construction and workplace accidents — a third-party negligence claim can run alongside workers' compensation when someone other than your employer caused the injury.
• Catastrophic injury — traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation and severe burns, where the lifetime cost of care is the case.
• Premises liability and dog bites — slip-and-fall, negligent security, and strict liability for bite-related medical costs under Pennsylvania's Dog Law (3 P.S. § 459-502).

Quinlan Law Group focuses on the serious end of that list: cases where the injury is permanent, the defendant is a commercial or institutional party, and the outcome depends on preparation and a real willingness to try the case.

Hiring Quinlan Law Group costs nothing up front. The fee is a percentage of the recovery, paid only if the case settles or wins at trial; if there is no recovery, there is no fee.

Pennsylvania does not set a fixed contingency percentage, but Rule 1.5(c) of the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct requires the agreement to be in writing and to state how the percentage is calculated and how case expenses are handled. Across the state, published firm fee pages consistently describe contingency fees in the 33⅓% to 40% range, with the higher figure typically applying once a lawsuit is filed or the case is tried. Case expenses — expert witnesses, medical records, accident reconstruction, court filing fees — are advanced by the firm and repaid from the recovery.

Two things to ask any lawyer before you sign: whether the percentage is taken before or after expenses, and whether the percentage rises if the case goes to suit. Both should be in the written agreement.

An injured Pennsylvanian can recover economic damages (medical bills, future care, lost wages, lost earning capacity), non-economic damages (pain, suffering, disfigurement, loss of life's pleasures), and in cases of outrageous conduct, punitive damages. Pennsylvania has no statutory cap on any of these against a private defendant.

The exceptions are governmental. Claims against the Commonwealth (for example, a PennDOT-maintained road defect) are capped at $250,000 per plaintiff and $1,000,000 per occurrence under 42 Pa.C.S. § 8528. Claims against local agencies — a township, a borough, a school district — are capped at $500,000 in aggregate under 42 Pa.C.S. § 8553.

In a fatal case, the wrongful death action (42 Pa.C.S. § 8301) compensates the spouse, children or parents for funeral costs, lost financial support and lost services; the survival action (42 Pa.C.S. § 8302) belongs to the estate and recovers the decedent's own pain and suffering and lost future earnings. The two are filed together and valued separately. See our guide to wrongful death vs. survival action.

Most Pennsylvania personal injury and wrongful death claims must be filed in court within two years, and missing that deadline ends the case regardless of its merits. The table below sets out the rules that apply most often.

Comparative negligence. Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 7102, you may recover as long as your share of fault is not greater than the defendants' combined share. At 50% you recover half your damages; at 51% you recover nothing. Insurers push hard on that one-point line, which is why the evidence of how the injury happened matters more than almost anything else. Since the 2011 Fair Share Act, a defendant is liable only for its own percentage unless it is 60% or more at fault.

Limited tort vs. full tort. Every Pennsylvania auto policy requires a tort election under 75 Pa.C.S. § 1705. Limited tort is cheaper and bars recovery for pain and suffering unless the injury is a "serious injury" (death, serious impairment of a body function, or permanent serious disfigurement) or an exception applies — including crashes caused by a driver convicted of DUI, drivers of out-of-state vehicles, and pedestrians. Full tort preserves the full claim. Our limited tort vs. full tort guide covers the exceptions in detail.

Uninsured and underinsured drivers. Under 75 Pa.C.S. § 1731, your own policy's UM/UIM coverage pays when the at-fault driver has none or too little. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Gallagher v. GEICO struck the "household vehicle exclusion" that insurers had used to deny stacked UIM claims, opening coverage many families were told they did not have. More on the statute of limitations and how these deadlines interact.

Get medical care the same day, report the incident, preserve every piece of evidence you can, and do not give a recorded statement to the other side's insurer before speaking to a lawyer. Those four steps protect the two things every case is built on: proof of what happened and proof of what it did to you.

1. Treat, and follow through. A gap between the injury and the first doctor visit is the defense's favorite argument.
2. Report it. Call police for any crash; report a fall to the property manager in writing; report a work injury to your employer within 21 days to protect workers' compensation benefits (120 days is the outer limit under the PA Workers' Compensation Act).
3. Photograph and keep. The scene, the vehicles, the hazard, your injuries as they heal. Keep the damaged helmet, the shoes, the clothing.
4. Identify witnesses and cameras. Traffic, dash, doorbell and store cameras overwrite in days to weeks; a preservation letter from counsel stops that.
5. Say nothing on the record. You must report the crash to your own insurer; you have no obligation to be recorded by the other driver's carrier.
6. Stay off social media. Adjusters read it.

Commercial truck cases add urgency: the carrier's electronic logging data, dash-cam footage and driver qualification file can be lawfully overwritten unless a spoliation letter goes out immediately.

Most Pennsylvania injury cases resolve in 12 to 24 months; catastrophic and wrongful death cases that go to trial commonly take two to three years. The timeline is driven by one rule: a case should not settle before the full extent of the injury is known.

The sequence is investigation and evidence preservation; treatment until you reach maximum medical improvement; a demand package to the insurer with medical proof and a damages analysis; negotiation; and, if the insurer will not pay fair value, a complaint filed in the Court of Common Pleas of the county where the injury occurred or the defendant resides (Pa.R.C.P. 1006). Claims under the county's arbitration limit — up to $50,000 under 42 Pa.C.S. § 7361 — go first to compulsory arbitration. Larger cases proceed through discovery, depositions, expert reports and mediation. Most settle before trial, but the settlement value depends on the insurer believing the lawyer will pick a jury. See settling vs. filing a lawsuit.

Pennsylvania injury lawsuits are filed in the Court of Common Pleas of one of the state's 67 counties, and Quinlan Law Group takes cases in all of them from its Camp Hill office in Cumberland County, minutes from the Dauphin County Courthouse in Harrisburg. Venue is set by where the injury happened or where a defendant can be served, which is why a Pittsburgh crash, an Erie dog bite case and a Philadelphia premises case each follow different local rules and different jury pools.

We come to you: hospital, rehab facility or home, anywhere from Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley to Pittsburgh, Scranton, State College and Erie. County and city guides are at Pennsylvania counties we serve and Pennsylvania cities we serve, and Interstate 81 and 83 freight-corridor cases are covered on our Dauphin County truck accident page.

The right lawyer for a serious injury case has tried Pennsylvania injury cases to verdict, handles your type of case regularly, and will tell you personally who is doing the work. Ask these questions on the first call:

• Who will handle my case day to day, and will I speak with the attorney or only a case manager?
• How many cases like mine have you taken to trial in a Pennsylvania county court?
• Do you understand my tort election and my UM/UIM stacking options before we talk numbers?
• If my case is referred to co-counsel, will I be told in writing and shown the fee split before representation begins?

Sean Quinlan has been a Pennsylvania-licensed attorney since 2001 (Pennsylvania Supreme Court ID 86858), evaluates every new case personally, and, where a matter is referred to co-counsel, discloses the arrangement in writing before it starts.

The claims that lose value in Pennsylvania are lost through delay, silence, and premature settlement rather than weak facts. The most damaging errors:

• Waiting to treat or skipping follow-up care, which the insurer reads as proof the injury was minor.
• Giving a recorded statement to the other driver's carrier in the first week.
• Accepting the first offer before the injury has plateaued — a release ends the claim even if surgery is later needed.
• Assuming limited tort ends the case without checking the § 1705 exceptions.
• Missing the six-month government notice when a state road, PennDOT contractor, SEPTA or a municipal vehicle is involved.
• Posting about the accident or your recovery online.
• Letting truck or camera evidence expire because no preservation letter was sent.

Hire us because we take the cases where the lawyer changes the outcome, we prepare every case as though it will be tried, and Sean Quinlan personally evaluates and stays on every file. Act now because the evidence that wins serious cases — camera footage, truck data, witness memory, the scene itself — disappears within days, and the two-year clock in 42 Pa.C.S. § 5524 is already running.

Consultations are free and confidential, available 24/7 for new injury cases, and there is no fee unless we win.