Fort Lauderdale Catastrophic Injury Lawyer
Fort Lauderdale Catastrophic Injury Lawyer
Learn About Long-Lasting Injuries in Florida
While any injury can be severely damaging to the physical and emotional well-being of an individual, catastrophic injuries are often even more difficult to deal with after an accident. A catastrophic injury is one that is serious enough to result in a long-term medical condition, a permanent disability, or even a shortened life expectancy. Such damage usually requires a lot of time, resources, and effort since the victims are undergoing rehabilitation, multiple surgeries, and long hospital stays.
Common Catastrophic Injuries
While there are many types of long-lasting injuries, the following are a list of the most common:
Spinal Cord Injury
Caused by trauma or impact to the spine, this type of injury can cause paralysis of anywhere from two or four limbs, depending on the level of the vertebra that was damaged. Those closer to the neck have a greater chance of paralyzing more of the body. While some patients can receive feeling back through physical therapy and rehabilitation, many victims of spinal cord injury end up paralyzed for life.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Commonly known as TBI, brain injury may occur if the skull is shattered from an intense force, or if the tissue is severely jolted. These may affect social, physical, mental, and behavioral functions of a person’s body, as well as have the potential to cause permanent disability. Even for impermanent injury, victims still have a long, painful road to recovery ahead of them.
Internal Organ Damage
Organs that are most exposed, such as the head or stomach, are more at risk for injury. Force or trauma to a person’s organs can cause internal bleeding, visceral pain, aches, loss of consciousness, and other types of illness.
Broken Bones
While not all fractured bones are catastrophic, bones that are crushed, compound fractures, or those that are sustained by the elderly can have severe consequences. Victims might have to go through multiple surgeries, bed rest, and physical therapy before a bone can get healed, if at all.
Personal injury attorneys Craig Posner and Eric Feingold are both excellent attorneys, but more importantly, they are excellent people. I have seen first hand their hard work and dedication to clients. I would not hesitate to recommend their services to others.
– Matthew T.
Amputations
Sometimes, removing an individual’s limb is necessary to save their life. Limbs that have to come off usually are damaged from burns, heavy machinery, organ damage, or severe lacerations. Those who suffer an amputation are then required to learn a completely new way of living.
Birth Injury
While a child is being delivered, doctors may experience complications from the baby’s position or how quickly the baby comes. In these types of situations, medical professionals do not always handle the situation in a reasonable manner. Sometimes they have not been adequately trained, which can lead to types of birth injury such as serious wounds to the baby, mother, or both.
Back Injuries
These are often a result of workplace accidents or car accidents. Often occurring in the lower back, this type of injury could be a fractured, sprain, herniated disc, or strain that severely limits an individual’s movement.
Burn Injury
Damage to the skin that is caused by extreme heat from fire, chemicals, x-rays, or any other substance is known as a burn. These can range from superficial burns, known as first-degree burns, to burns that reach to the bone and tissue, called fourth-degree burns. If the damage is serious enough then it could cause intense scarring, or even amputation.
over
10+
of Millions Recovered
Protection from a Compassionate Fort Lauderdale Catastrophic Injury Lawyer
Plantation Personal Injury FAQs
When Is It the Right Time to Call a Personal Injury Lawyer?
The right time to call is as soon as possible after your accident. There are many reasons why you need to begin the legal process as quickly as you can. The legal process may even begin without you, with many calls from the insurance company trying to either rush you or to pressure you to give a statement. They may try to catch you unaware and trick you into compromising your legal rights. Hiring an attorney could prevent this from happening.
Â
Equally important, as time passes from the time of your accident, the evidence that could help your claim can become harder to find. People might quickly clear the scene of the accident, and you may lose the ability to contact witnesses. The witnesses that you have may begin to lose their recollection of what they saw. When you hire a personal injury lawyer, they will get to work immediately to gather the evidence before it is lost.
Â
Calling a lawyer to get started on your case is a crucial step in the legal process. Knowing that you have someone on the job with the experience and tenacity to fight for you can give you at least some peace of mind during an undoubtedly difficult time.
How Do Insurance Settlement Negotiations Work?
An insurance claim is just like any other negotiation. You have a number in mind for what you think that you should receive for your injuries, and the insurance company has a much lower number in mind for what it wants to pay. Your insurance claim begins when your Plantation personal injury attorney files a demand letter with the insurance company. This is when the adjuster goes to work to try to save money for their bosses.
The insurance adjuster may outright deny your claim or question liability. They may come back with a settlement offer. When the number seems low, and it will, know that this is just their opening offer. Your Plantation injury attorney will likely reject the offer and respond with your own demand.
Eventually, you will lower your number, and the insurance company will raise theirs, and you could meet somewhere in the middle. This is a time-honored dance that personal injury lawyers have been doing with insurance companies since the advent of courtrooms. Even when you seem very far apart from the insurance company, most cases eventually will settle.
What Happens After I File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Filing a personal injury lawsuit is an early part of the claim process. Most cases will never go far enough to see the inside of a courtroom. Statistically speaking, a vast majority of personal injury cases are settled out of court. However, if your case does make it to court, you should expect going into it that the trial process may take one to two years to complete. The legal system is far from rushed, as courts and judges have busy schedules and full dockets.
In the short term, you can expect motions and attempts to obtain evidence. Many people associate a lawsuit with a trial, but that only happens after many months of the nuts and bolts of the legal system. The phase of your case that will take the longest time is discovery. This is when the two sides obtain evidence that the other has in their possession. At this point, you may even need to sit for a deposition.
Filing a lawsuit will not cut off settlement negotiations. As was previously mentioned, most cases will settle without a trial. If anything, litigation may give each side more incentive to settle. The two parties usually continue negotiating right up until the point when the jury is seated.
What Evidence Can Prove My Injury Claim?
Negligence is the basis of every personal injury claim. When you file a lawsuit in court, you have the burden of proof. It will be up to you to show that what you say is more likely than not to have happened. You need to back your claim up with evidence.
Â
Your Plantation personal injury lawyer will work to gather things that can backup your side of the story, including:
— Witness statements from people who say your injury or accident
— Pictures of the scene of your accident
— Security camera footage
— Expert witness testimony that could reconstruct the accident
— Maintenance logs of the area or vehicle involved
— Medical records that can help prove damages
Â
These are things that can be difficult to get on your own and piece together to tell the story of what happened. Injury lawyers in Plantation, Florida, know how to both get the evidence and use it to prove that someone else was responsible for your accident.
What if I Cannot Work Due to My Injuries?
Your personal injury damages include both economic and non-economic compensation. Economic compensation aims to pay you back for the actual money that you lost. This includes bills that you paid and earnings you lost. This specifically pays you back for lost wages from your job when you are unable to work. Since you would have worked, this is money out of your pocket.
Lost wages in a personal injury settlement are much broader than you think. Of course, this includes the time that you have already missed from work. It also encompasses time that you will miss from work in the future. You do not need to outright miss work to receive compensation for this. For example, if you were qualified for a promotion but cannot get it now because your injury limits you in the type of work that you can do, you can get compensation for the reduction in your earning capacity.
Lost wages are often a very contested part of your personal injury claim because you can bet that the insurance company will see things differently to try to lower its bill. They may dispute what your possible earnings are or use a lower rate of inflation to calculate what they may be in the future.