Cardinal North

There’s a stigma around personal injury cases.

That people are being greedy, or asking for too much.

But the reality is—we can’t undo what happened.

We can’t give someone their health back.

The only way the system allows someone to recover is financially.

And that’s not about greed. It’s about accountability, and making sure it doesn’t happen to someone else.

To prove negligence we have to show three things.

There was a duty owed by the at-fault person. The plaintiff was in the class of people that duty was owed to. And the at-fault person breached that duty — they didn't do what they were supposed to do, or they did something the wrong way.

We use industry standards, codes, and regulations to figure out what should have happened and what didn't.

My name is Jennifer Bechtold, and I’m a plaintiff’s personal injury attorney.

At Cardinal North, we help people who’ve been hurt because someone else didn’t follow through on what they were responsible for.

At the end of the day, it’s about making lives whole—our clients, our team, and the community we’re part of.

Personal Injury Protection (PIP) extends beyond just the driver. If you're involved in a collision, PIP can cover each of your passengers individually—and injured passengers may even qualify for two separate layers of coverage using both policies. Protect your loved ones on the road by making sure your PIP policy is up to date today.

While an insurance adjuster works for the carrier to minimize claim payouts, your insurance agent is there to protect your family and help ensure you have the right coverage in place.

Here at Cardinal North, we love working alongside dedicated agents who genuinely advocate for their policyholders when it matters most. If you’re feeling stonewalled by an adjuster, know that you don't have to handle the process alone!

Want to know exactly what your insurance covers? Call your insurance company and ask for your declarations page to see your liability and UM/UIM limits. This will help you figure out your available limits and decide if you need to increase your coverage. It is important to make sure you have the right coverage to protect yourself, especially if you are now driving around children or an elderly parent.

At Cardinal North, we recognize the incredible service and sacrifices our veterans have made for our country and community. To show our respect, we provide an automatic reduction in our fee percentage as soon as we learn a client is a veteran. This discount is applied to the fee agreement before any work on the case even begins.

Just because someone is hurt on a property does not necessarily mean the property owner is at fault. Sometimes things just happen and the property could be fine. For a property owner to be responsible, we have to show they had possession, control, or ownership. We must also show there was something unreasonably dangerous on the property that they knew or should have known was there.

The status of the client matters because the standard of care is different for a trespasser, a licensee, or an invitee. The courts have said we cannot hold an owner to the highest level of care if they are not expecting someone to be there. A person in an employee-only storage room who trips over a cord might be a trespasser. This is different from a business invitee who enters a grocery store to shop. We have to show an unreasonably dangerous condition existed that the owner knew about and did nothing about.

Other Similar Incidents, or OSIs, can help show that the defendant knew or should have known about a dangerous condition

Being human means showing that we aren't perfect, we can trip, and you can have mess-ups. We aren't up here while our clients are down there—we are together in the human sphere, experiencing this journey on the same level. That relatability builds real trust with our clients and before a jury.