Des Moines Personal Injury Attorney

If you were seriously hurt in Des Moines, you are facing an insurance company that deals with claims like yours every single day — and you are doing it once, while injured. I am Frank Younes, a personal injury attorney based in Omaha, and I represent injured people and grieving families throughout Polk County and across Iowa. Des Moines is an insurance industry town, which is worth stating plainly: the carriers headquartered here are the same carriers that defend injury claims across the Midwest. Being outmatched by a large insurer on its home ground is exactly the problem I exist to solve. Iowa’s two-year filing deadline (Iowa Code § 614.1(2)) applies.

Consultations are free, confidential, and carry no obligation. If I take your case, there is no fee unless I win it.

Where Serious Crashes Happen in Des Moines

Every community has its own geography of risk, and Des Moines's runs along Interstate 80, Interstate 35, I-235 through the heart of the city, US-65 and the Des Moines bypass.

I-235 cuts directly through central Des Moines with closely spaced interchanges and constant merging — a design that produces a high volume of rear-end and sideswipe crashes. The I-80/I-35 mixmaster north and west of the city is one of Iowa’s heaviest freight junctions.

The cases I handle out of Des Moines follow that map: rear-end and intersection collisions, head-on crashes on rural highways, semi-truck and commercial vehicle wrecks, motorcycle crashes where a driver "never saw" the rider, pedestrian and bicycle injuries, and the single-vehicle crashes where a passenger is hurt through no fault of their own. What they share is an insurer whose first offer arrives before anyone knows what the injury will actually cost.

Where Your Des Moines Case Would Be Filed

Des Moines sits in Polk County, and civil injury cases arising here are filed in Polk County District Court — in the Polk County Courthouse downtown. County court handles smaller claims; district court is where serious injury and wrongful death cases belong.

Filing location matters more than most people expect. It determines the jury pool that would ultimately decide your case, the local rules and scheduling practices your lawyer has to work within, and the judges in front of whom the case will be argued. Insurance carriers evaluate cases with venue in mind — they know which counties return which kinds of verdicts, and they price settlements accordingly. Being represented by someone who has actually tried cases in Iowa courts, and who is prepared to file and try yours, is what moves a claim from a nuisance number to a serious one.

Getting Medical Care — and Why It Drives Your Claim

Injured people in Des Moines are generally treated at MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center and UnityPoint Health — Iowa Methodist. Get evaluated promptly, tell the provider about every body part that hurts — not just the worst one — and follow the treatment plan you are given.

This is not just medical advice. Your medical records are the backbone of your claim's value. Gaps in treatment, missed appointments, and body parts that appear in the record weeks later are the three most common tools an adjuster uses to argue you were not really hurt. The record you build in the first weeks after a Des Moines crash will still be shaping your case a year later.

Who pays those bills in the meantime is its own question. The at-fault driver's insurer does not pay as you go — it pays once, at the end. In the meantime your own health insurance, medical payments coverage, or provider arrangements carry the load, and those payers may assert repayment rights against your eventual settlement. Handling those liens correctly is part of what determines how much of a settlement you actually keep.

Work Injuries in Des Moines

The employers around Des Moines include insurance and financial services, state government, healthcare, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution, and construction across a fast-growing metro. Each of those industries carries its own injury profile, and each produces claims that are routinely underpaid.

If you were hurt on the job in Iowa, workers' compensation should pay your medical care and part of your lost wages regardless of who was at fault — but it pays nothing for pain and suffering and only a fraction of your wages. What most injured workers are never told is that workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy against your employer only. If someone else contributed to your injury — a subcontractor, a negligent driver, the manufacturer of a defective machine, a property owner who ignored a hazard — you may also have a separate personal injury claim that pays everything comp does not. Those two claims interact, and they belong in one set of hands.

What Iowa Law Gives You — and the Deadlines That Take It Away

Iowa gives you two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit (Iowa Code § 614.1(2)), and the same two-year window applies to wrongful death claims, measured from the date of death. That is half the time Nebraska allows, and it is the single most common way an Iowa claim is lost.

Iowa uses a modified comparative fault rule: your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, and barred entirely if you are more than 50% at fault. Adjusters push fault onto injured people precisely because every percentage point is money out of your pocket.

Deadlines are not the real emergency, though — evidence is. Vehicles get repaired or salvaged, surveillance and dashcam footage is overwritten on a schedule measured in days, skid marks wash away, and witnesses move and forget. In truck cases, the electronic data on the tractor and the carrier's driver logs can be gone before a family has left the hospital unless someone formally demands their preservation. The strongest Des Moines cases are the ones where that work started in the first week.

What Is a Des Moines Injury Case Actually Worth?

Anyone who quotes you a number before your medical picture is clear is guessing. What a case is genuinely worth turns on a handful of things: the severity and permanence of your injuries, the total of your medical bills — past and future — the wages and earning capacity you have lost, how clearly liability can be proven, and how much insurance coverage actually exists to pay it.

That last item surprises people. A minimum-limits auto policy disappears into the first days of a hospital stay, which is why tracing every layer of available coverage matters so much: the at-fault driver's liability policy, your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, other household policies, umbrella policies, and — in commercial vehicle cases — the much larger policies carried by trucking companies, their owners, and the freight brokers who hired them.

The future is usually the largest number in a serious case and the one insurers most hope you will forget: the surgery your doctor says you will likely need in ten years, the overtime you can no longer work, the career that a permanent restriction quietly ended. In cases that justify it, I bring in treating physicians, life-care planners, vocational experts and economists to put defensible figures on those losses rather than leaving them to an adjuster's estimate.

If Your Des Moines Family Lost Someone

When a crash or a workplace incident in Polk County takes a life, the family's claim is a wrongful death action — brought by the personal representative of the estate for the benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin. It can recover the financial support and services the family lost, along with the companionship and society that no settlement can replace but that the law still requires be valued honestly.

These cases run on a shorter clock than ordinary injury claims, and shorter still when a city, county, school district or state agency may be involved. If that describes your family, please have the conversation early — not because anyone is eager to talk about litigation while you are grieving, but because the evidence that proves what happened is disappearing while the decision waits.

How I Work With Clients in Des Moines

My office is in Omaha, and I represent clients throughout Iowa and Iowa. In practice that means the distance is my problem, not yours: I travel for meetings, handle much of a case by phone, video and email, and come to you when injuries make travel hard. You will speak with me — not be handed off to a case manager you have never met.

Here is what I take off your shoulders: dealing with the adjusters and their recorded-statement requests, preserving the evidence before it disappears, building the medical and wage record, calculating what the injury will cost you over a lifetime rather than just this month, negotiating the liens, and preparing the case as though a Polk County jury will decide it. Your job is to get better.

Before You Talk to the Insurance Company

Three things protect a Des Moines claim more than anything else. First, do not give the other driver's insurer a recorded statement before you have talked to a lawyer — that call is not a formality, and it is not being taken for your benefit. Second, do not accept an early settlement while you are still treating; once you sign the release, the claim is over permanently, no matter what your body does afterward. Third, photograph and preserve everything you can — the vehicles before repair, the scene, your injuries as they heal, and the names of every witness.

The consultation costs nothing and obligates you to nothing. Most people leave it knowing more about their own claim than the insurance company ever intended to tell them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you handle cases in Des Moines?

Yes. I am based in Omaha and represent injured people throughout Polk County and across Iowa and Iowa. I travel to meet clients, and much of a case can be handled by phone, video and email — you should not have to drive across the state while you are hurt.

Which court would my Des Moines case be filed in?

Serious injury and wrongful death cases arising in Des Moines are generally filed in Polk County District Court, in the Polk County Courthouse downtown. Venue affects the jury pool, the local rules, and how insurance carriers value the case.

How long do I have to file an injury claim in Des Moines?

Iowa generally allows two years from the date of injury (Iowa Code § 614.1(2)), including for wrongful death claims measured from the date of death. That is half of Nebraska's deadline, and shorter notice requirements can apply to claims against government entities.

What does it cost to hire you?

Nothing up front. I handle injury cases on a contingency fee — no attorney's fee unless I win your case — and the consultation is free and confidential.

I was hurt at work in Des Moines. Is that a workers' compensation case or an injury case?

Possibly both. Workers' compensation covers your medical care and part of your wages regardless of fault, but pays nothing for pain and suffering. If someone other than your employer contributed — a driver, a subcontractor, an equipment manufacturer — a separate claim may exist alongside it. One conversation sorts out which claims you have.

The insurance company already offered me money. Should I take it?

Not before you understand your full medical picture and every layer of available coverage. Early offers are made because they are cheap, and signing a release ends the claim permanently — no matter what treatment you need later.

Practice areas: Car Accidents · Semi-Truck Accidents · Motorcycle Accidents · Wrongful Death · Work Injuries · Railroad & FELA