Ask around Portland what a personal injury lawyer handles, and most people say car crashes. Then they slip on an untreated stairway in the Old Port, get bitten by a dog on the Eastern Prom, or fall on a job site off Washington Avenue, and they never make the call because they assume no one takes cases like theirs.
At Altman Nussbaum Shunnarah Trial Attorneys, a Portland personal injury lawyer from our team will tell you the truth: those cases are exactly what we do, and insurers count on you not knowing that.
While your bills stack up, an adjuster is calculating the smallest number you might accept.
Call (205) 323-1000 before you take it. The conversation is free, and it may change what the next year of your life looks like.
The Cases Our Portland Personal Injury Lawyers Handle
If someone else's carelessness put you in the emergency room at Maine Med or Mercy, there is a strong chance we can take your case. Car wrecks are only one slice of the injury work we do in Portland, and often not the biggest one.
Our firm goes after negligent property owners, businesses, contractors, and individuals in cases involving:
- Falls on ice, snow, wet floors, and broken stairs at stores, restaurants, apartment buildings, and parking lots
- Dog attacks, where Maine law under 7 M.R.S. § 3961 holds owners strictly liable when their dog hurts someone off the owner's property, with no history of aggression required
- Construction site injuries are tied to the hotel and condo building boom reshaping the peninsula
- Injuries on the working waterfront, from dock accidents to equipment failures
- Bar and restaurant injuries, including assaults where security was absent, and overservice cases
That list is a starting point, not a fence. Negligent security, defective products, and boating injuries on Casco Bay all cross our desks, too. If you were hurt and someone else caused it, bring it to a Portland personal injury attorney on our team and let us tell you what the claim is worth.
Can You Sue the City of Portland If You Were Hurt on Public Property?
Sometimes, yes, but the famous six-year deadline everyone cites does not protect you here. Claims against the City of Portland, the school district, METRO, or the State of Maine fall under the Maine Tort Claims Act, and that law resets the clock completely.
Under 14 M.R.S. § 8107, you must serve a formal written notice of your claim within 365 days of the injury. Miss it without good cause, and your case can die before it starts, no matter how badly you were hurt. Any lawsuit then has to be filed within two years, not six.
Government cases carry other landmines, too. Immunity rules shield public entities from many claims, damage caps limit what you can recover, and the notice itself has to contain specific information served on specific officials. This is not a claim to handle on your own timeline.
We have watched insurers stay silent for months, knowing the notice clock is running on an injured person who has no idea it exists. That silence is a strategy. Beat it by acting first.
Winter Falls in Portland Are Not Just Bad Luck
The brick sidewalks that make the Old Port charming in July turn treacherous by January, and Maine's freeze-thaw cycles glaze steps and parking lots overnight. Property owners here know this. It happens every single year.
That knowledge matters legally. Under 14 M.R.S. § 159, Maine businesses and property owners owe their customers and invited guests a duty of reasonable care, and in this climate, reasonable care means treating ice, clearing snow, and fixing hazards they know winter creates. A restaurant that lets its entryway stay glazed through the lunch rush is not unlucky. It is negligent.
Renters have these rights too. If your landlord let the stairs of a Munjoy Hill walk-up ice over or ignored a broken railing for months, a fall on that property is a claim, not a complaint. Tenants often assume they cannot act against the person who holds their lease, and a Portland injury lawyer can tell you exactly why that assumption is wrong.
Insurers fight these cases hard, usually by blaming your footwear, your phone, or your pace. We answer with maintenance logs, weather data, prior complaints, and photos, and we build fall cases with the same trial-ready pressure we bring to a highway wreck. Over $1 billion in recoveries came from refusing to treat any case as small.
Does Workers' Comp Stop You From Suing After a Job Injury?
It stops you from suing your employer, but it does not protect everyone else who contributed to your injury. That distinction is worth real money, and most injured workers in Portland never hear about it.
Workers' compensation through the Maine Workers' Compensation Board pays partial wages and medical costs without regard to fault, and in exchange, you generally cannot sue the company that employs you. But Portland job sites rarely involve just one company.
A laborer hurt on a Fore Street hotel project might have a claim against a subcontractor, an equipment manufacturer, or the property owner, and a delivery driver hit near the Maine Mall can sue the motorist who struck him.
These third-party claims run alongside workers' comp and can recover what comp never pays, including pain and suffering and full lost wages. We dig into every injury to find who else belongs on the hook. Fishermen and maritime workers may have separate claims under federal law as well, another door most people never know exists.
What Is Your Portland Injury Claim Actually Worth?
More than the first offer, almost every time. Insurance companies price early settlements against your desperation, not your damages, and they move fastest when your losses are still growing.
A real valuation accounts for every medical bill you have and every one still coming, the paychecks you lost, and the earning power your injury took from you. It counts the pain, the disrupted sleep, the season of your kid's games you watched from a folding chair, and the permanence of what the injury left behind.
It also weighs how a Cumberland County jury would react to the evidence, because that number sets the ceiling insurers negotiate against.
We do not guess at any of this. Our attorneys work the file, consult medical and economic professionals when the injuries demand it, and put a documented number on the table. Then we fight until the offer respects it, in negotiation or in a courtroom.
That is the difference a personal injury attorney in Portland should make: the insurer stops negotiating against your patience and starts negotiating against your evidence.
When an Injury Becomes a Wrongful Death Case
Some negligence takes more than health. When a family member dies because of someone else's carelessness, Maine's wrongful death law, 18-C M.R.S. § 2-807, lets the estate's personal representative bring a claim for the people left behind.
These cases can recover funeral costs, medical expenses from the final injury, lost financial support, and the loss of comfort, society, and companionship. When the person suffered consciously before death, the law allows additional damages for that suffering. Most wrongful death claims must be filed within three years of the death, a far shorter window than Maine's usual injury deadline.
No verdict rebuilds a family. What it can do is secure the household that the person would have provided for, and force accountability where an insurer hoped for silence.
A Different Kind of Injury Firm
Plenty of firms in Maine sign cases, wait for an offer, and take it. That model is why insurers get away with paying less, and it is the opposite of how we built a record of more than $1 billion recovered for over 100,000 clients.
Results may vary. Prior case outcomes do not guarantee similar results.
Every file we open gets worked like a Cumberland County jury will see it. That preparation is leverage, because adjusters track which firms actually try cases and price their offers accordingly, when they see our name, the math changes.
You also get the reach of a firm with the attention of attorneys who pick up the phone at midnight, because injuries do not schedule themselves. We front every case cost, and our fee only comes out of what we recover for you.
Put that machinery behind your claim. Call (205) 323-1000 and find out what your case looks like when someone is actually fighting it.
FAQs: Portland Personal Injury Lawyer
These are the questions Portland clients actually ask us in first meetings, beyond the basics covered above.
Can I file a claim against a friend, neighbor, or local business without destroying the relationship?
In most cases, yes, because you are really filing against an insurance policy, not a person's savings. Homeowners insurance typically covers a fall at a friend's house, and businesses carry liability coverage for exactly these situations. The premium was paid so injured people could be compensated, so using it is not a betrayal.
What if the person who injured me has no insurance and no money?
Then the case turns on finding every other source of recovery, and that is investigative work we do well. A second defendant may share fault, a property owner or employer may bear responsibility, or your own policies may contain coverage you did not know you had. Some cases truly have no path, and if yours is one, we will tell you straight instead of wasting your time.
Do you take injury cases outside of Portland?
Yes. We handle claims across Cumberland County and throughout Maine, from Biddeford to Lewiston to the midcoast, wherever the injury happened.
What should I bring to my first meeting?
Bring whatever you have, and do not stay home because you think you have too little. Photos, medical paperwork, the names of witnesses, correspondence from insurers, and incident reports all help. If all you have is your memory of what happened, that is enough for us to evaluate the claim and start collecting the rest ourselves.
Can I switch lawyers if my case is already underway?
Yes, you have the right to change attorneys at almost any point, and it usually costs you nothing extra since the lawyers divide one fee. People come to us mid-case when their calls go unreturned, or their firm is pushing a settlement that feels thin. We will review where your case stands honestly, even if the honest answer is that your current lawyer is doing fine.
What if my injury seemed minor at first but got worse?
Get back to a doctor now, and then call us, because insurers exploit any gap in treatment. An injury that looked minor at first often turns out to be more serious, and early records that say "minor" become the defense's favorite exhibit. The sooner your file reflects the true injury, the harder your claim is to attack.
Will hiring a Portland personal injury lawyer slow my case down?
Usually the opposite, because delay mostly comes from insurers stalling unrepresented people they see no reason to pay. Representation forces deadlines, demands, and consequences into the process, and settlements built on complete evidence take longer than quick releases. We will lay out both paths so the pace is your informed choice, not the adjuster's.
Get a Second Opinion Before You Sign Anything
An insurance company's first offer is an opening bid dressed up as a favor. Once you sign the release, there is no renegotiating when the surgery bill lands six months later, and no judge in Maine can reopen a deal you accepted too soon.
Before you accept a number, let our trial attorneys tell you what your claim is actually worth. The review is free, there is no obligation, and no fee ever comes out of your pocket unless we recover for you. Call (205) 323-1000 any hour, or contact us online, and get an answer the adjuster hoped you would never hear.