Car crashes happen so fast that you’re lucky if you have a second to slam on the brakes or brace for the impact. In the blink of an eye your world is turned upside down, and everything that mattered yesterday seems small next to your family and your future. We get that. We also understand the practical role money plays in putting a life back together: medical bills, lost paychecks, a car that no longer exists. Scalli Murphy Law has handled motor vehicle injury claims from our Everett office since 1994, and today from Danvers and Medford as well.
The Crashes We Handle
Most of our cases are car crashes, but the same body of Massachusetts law covers nearly everything with wheels:
- Car and truck collisions, including tractor-trailer and commercial vehicle cases
- Motorcycle crashes
- Drivers who hit pedestrians and cyclists
- Uber and Lyft crashes, which come with their own insurance rules
- E-bike, scooter, and moped injuries
- Railroad and subway incidents
Step One: Your Own No-Fault Coverage (PIP)
Massachusetts is a no-fault state, which surprises people who assume the other driver’s insurer pays first. It doesn’t. Your own policy’s Personal Injury Protection pays up to $8,000 toward medical bills, most of your lost wages, and out-of-pocket costs like co-pays and rides to appointments. PIP pays regardless of fault. Even a driver who caused the crash gets these benefits.
PIP is also where insurers start their games: cutoff exams and records requests designed to stall, then a coordination fight with your health insurer over who pays what. We handle the paperwork so the benefits actually arrive.
Liability Coverage and the “Serious Injury” Rule
Beyond PIP, every Massachusetts driver must carry liability coverage for the harm they cause. The required minimums are $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, plus $30,000 for property damage, under the higher limits that took effect July 1, 2025. In any serious crash those minimums run out quickly, so part of our work is finding every policy that applies: the driver’s, the vehicle owner’s, an employer’s commercial policy, umbrella coverage, and your own underinsured motorist benefits.
Before you can pursue a pain-and-suffering claim against the at-fault driver, Massachusetts law requires a “serious injury” as the statute defines it. You qualify if you have any one of the following:
- Reasonable and related medical expenses over $2,000
- Permanent and serious disfigurement
- A fracture or broken bone
- Loss of a part of the body
- Substantial loss of sight or hearing
- Death
Most injury cases clear the $2,000 threshold once the ER visit and follow-up care are counted. We run that analysis in the first conversation.
Hit by an Uninsured or Underinsured Driver
The Insurance Research Council found that more than one in seven American drivers carried no insurance in 2023. Massachusetts runs well below the national rate, but uninsured drivers are still out there, and New Hampshire, which does not require liability insurance at all, is right next door.
If the driver who hit you has no coverage, your own policy’s Uninsured Motorist benefits step in. If the driver has coverage but not enough, your Underinsured Motorist coverage can make up part of the difference, provided your UIM limits exceed the at-fault driver’s. Either way you are negotiating with your own insurance company, and that relationship is friendlier in the ads than in the claims department. Treat it like the adversarial claim it is. In our experience these claims often resolve faster than suits against strangers’ insurers, but only when they are documented the same way.
Proving Fault
Massachusetts follows modified comparative negligence: you can recover as long as you were not more than 50 percent at fault, and your recovery is reduced by your percentage (M.G.L. c. 231, s. 85). Insurers know this rule and use it, which is why the adjuster keeps asking what you could have done differently.
Fault gets built from evidence: the police crash report, photographs, witness statements, vehicle damage patterns, and sometimes reconstruction experts. We collect it before it disappears. If you want to see how the other side approaches this, we wrote about the tactics Massachusetts insurers actually use.
What Compensation Covers
A motor vehicle claim can include past and future medical treatment, lost earnings and lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering once the serious injury rule is met. Property damage runs on a separate, faster track; if the insurer is calling your car a total loss, our post on totaled vehicles and diminished value explains your options. What a claim is worth depends on facts, medical records, and venue, not a calculator. Our write-up on how Massachusetts car accident settlements actually get valued goes deeper.
Deadlines That Can End Your Case
You generally have three years from the crash to file suit (M.G.L. c. 260, s. 2A). Some cases have far shorter fuses. Claims against public entities, including the MBTA or a city vehicle, require formal presentment within two years, and defects in public ways carry a 30-day notice requirement. If a government defendant might be involved, the clock is already running. Call now, sort out the rest later.
The First 48 Hours
What you do right after a crash shapes the claim. Get medical care even if you feel “mostly fine,” because adjusters read treatment gaps as proof you were never hurt. Photograph everything. Report the crash. Say little to the other insurer and nothing on a recorded line before you get advice. We keep a full checklist in what to do after a Massachusetts car accident.
Questions We Hear Every Week
The adjuster says I was partly at fault. Do I still have a case?
Usually, yes. Partial fault reduces a recovery; it only eliminates one if your share passes 50 percent. Adjusters routinely overstate a claimant’s percentage, which is one of the first things we push back on.
My medical bills are under $2,000. Is there anything to pursue?
PIP still covers your bills and lost wages, and the threshold has exceptions, including fractures and disfigurement. Bills also grow. The number that matters is the final one, not the week-one total.
What does it cost to hire you?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency: the fee is a percentage of the recovery, and if there is no recovery there is no fee.
How long will my case take?
Straightforward claims with finished medical treatment can resolve in months. Cases with ongoing treatment, disputed fault, or lowball offers take longer, because settling before you know the full extent of your injuries means settling cheap. We move cases as fast as the medicine allows.
Where We Handle Motor Vehicle Cases
Our attorneys handle crash cases across Massachusetts from our Everett, Danvers, and Medford offices. Local pages for the communities closest to our offices:
Everett · Medford · Malden · Chelsea · Revere · Danvers · Peabody · Salem · Somerville · Lynn · Beverly
All communities we serve are listed on our Areas We Serve page.
Talk to Us Before You Talk to Their Adjuster
After a serious crash you will be dealing with pain, paperwork, and an insurer whose job is to close your file cheap. Let us take the recovery of money damages off your plate: the medical bills, the lost income, the pain and suffering the law allows. We do this every day for people across Massachusetts. Call 617-387-7000 or toll-free (833) 933-HURT for a free consultation. There’s no fee until after we recover for you.
Dealing with a specific insurer? Our Massachusetts insurance company guides explain how Commerce and MAPFRE, GEICO, Progressive, Safety, Plymouth Rock, and Arbella handle injury claims.
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