After a crash in Chestnut Hill you are dealing with injuries, a car you may not have back, and an insurer already looking for a reason to pay less. Zavodnick & Lasky Personal Injury Lawyers represent drivers, passengers and pedestrians hurt in this part of the city.
Germantown Avenue is paved in Belgian block and carries trolley rails that have not moved a trolley in decades. Drivers slide on it in the rain, motorcycles go down on it, and insurers use it as an argument: the road did that, not our insured.
Arguments like that one are answerable with the right evidence. Call (215) 875-7030.
Why do insurers discount crashes up here?
Because the neighborhood does not match the template they use for Philadelphia claims. Speeds on Germantown Avenue are low, the damage photos look modest, and the adjuster reaches for a familiar script about minor impacts and pre-existing conditions.
Low speed is not the same as low force, and cars that stop suddenly on cobblestone and rail transfer that force to the people inside. What answers the script is an early medical record that describes symptoms plainly, consistent treatment, and a doctor who connects the condition to the crash rather than to age.
The roads that produce these cases
Lincoln Drive does most of the damage in this part of the city. The curves, the camber, wet leaves in the fall and drivers carrying more speed than the geometry allows produce single-vehicle crashes, crossover collisions and rear-end chains near the light changes.
Germantown Avenue adds its own inventory: cars pulling out of angled parking into moving traffic, the trolley-rail slide, delivery vehicles double-parked in a lane, and pedestrians crossing mid-block between shops. Bethlehem Pike, Stenton Avenue and the Wissahickon approaches bring in commuter speed where the neighborhood grid ends.
Call (215) 875-7030 if one of those describes your crash.
What if you chose limited tort?
Limited tort restricts your claim for pain and suffering, and it is not the end of the conversation. Limited tort still allows a claim for pain and suffering where the injury is a serious one. Separately, 75 Pa.C.S. § 1705 sets the limitation aside entirely in four situations involving the driver at fault: a DUI conviction or ARD in that crash, a vehicle registered in another state, no financial responsibility, or an intent to cause harm.
The limitation also does not apply to someone injured while occupying a motor vehicle other than a private passenger car, which is the rule that covers workers riding in a company truck or van.
Whether an injury qualifies as serious is decided on the medical evidence, not by the insurer’s first letter. If you were told your election ends the claim, that is worth a second look. Our limited tort page covers the election and the exceptions in more detail.
Where does a Chestnut Hill crash case get filed?
In the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, whose Trial Division sits at City Hall, since the crash happened in the city. Smaller claims can be handled in Municipal Court.
Where the other driver lives in Montgomery County, which happens constantly along the Bethlehem Pike corridor, the case still belongs where the crash occurred. The practical effect is a Philadelphia jury pool and a Philadelphia discovery schedule, which is worth knowing before you agree to settle a claim from a suburban adjuster’s desk.
What we do in the first two weeks
We ask for the crash report and read it against the photographs, because reports get direction of travel and lane position wrong often enough to matter. We look for video early: businesses along Germantown Avenue, doorbell cameras on the side streets, and the vehicles’ own event data recorders, all of which run on short cycles.
We document the road surface while it still looks the way it did. On a street with Belgian block and embedded rail, the condition of the surface in October is not the condition a photograph taken in January will show.
And we deal with the medical side, so treatment continues while liability is argued rather than stopping because a bill was denied.
What Chestnut Hill drivers ask us
My car slid on the trolley tracks and hit someone, am I automatically at fault?
Not automatically. Road conditions, another driver’s conduct, and the maintenance of the roadway itself can all bear on fault. Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 7102, a driver whose share of the blame is not greater than the other side’s can still recover, with damages reduced by that percentage.
The other driver’s insurer wants a recorded statement, do I have to give one?
Not to the other driver’s insurer. Your own policy may require cooperation with your carrier, which is a different obligation, and it is worth getting advice before either conversation.
I was hit while walking on Germantown Avenue, what covers my bills?
Medical benefits under an auto policy come first, whether that is the driver’s coverage or your own household policy. Which policy pays first is a question we sort out for clients before the bills start going to collections.
Talk to a lawyer who knows this stretch of the Avenue
The difference between a claim paid at face value and one argued down comes from the first two weeks: what the records say, what the photographs show, and whether anyone captured the road surface before the weather changed it.
Zavodnick & Lasky Personal Injury Lawyers take Chestnut Hill cases on a contingency basis, with the fee coming out of the recovery. Call (215) 875-7030. See our Chestnut Hill personal injury page for other claim types in the neighborhood, and our Philadelphia car accident page for how these cases work generally.
