Law

What Is a Catastrophic Injury and How Can a Lawyer Help You

Personal injury law or personal injury litigation is a comprehensive term to label the organization of civil law, which allows those who have been physically harmedpursue legal compensation against the offending party due to their wrongful actions. The legal objective of personal injury is to bring the harmed person back to the same fiscal standing that they were at before the injury occurred.

Personal injury law contains the exchange of cash— the wrongdoer is not charged with a criminal offence. Instead, it is charged with a monetary penalty that must be paid to the injured person.

A personal injury lawsuit refers to civil court action that aims to hold the negligent party accountable for their wrongdoing. These injuries can be a result of numerous things like car and truck accidents, medical malpractice and defective products,

What Is A Catastrophic Injury?

For plaintiff attorneys and insurance adjusters, catastrophic injury suits are thought of as different types of claims.

There is no formal legal definition for “catastrophic injuries.” Per 42 USC § 3796b, it is one that’s so harmful that it leads tolong-standing disability or debilitation. These injuriesperpetuallystops a person from carrying out any productive work.

In other circumstances, a catastrophic injury includes an injury that leads to a permanent deformity, physical or mental,that can be a result of several things. These things include cognitive dysfunction, loss of limbs, or spinal cord injury (paralysis), and more.

Generally, a catastrophic injury is one that results in:

  • More than $250,000 in monetary costs. These include wage loss due to inability to work or time lost at work, medical expenses and treatment, permanent disability or impairment.
  • Inability to retain or achieve lucrative employment that results in a lower financial standing than before. This can be determined by testimony from a medical professional or an FCE.
  • An injury that affects the victim and their families, such as those injuries that require around the clock health care or support from loved ones.

A catastrophic injury suit can be filed by defendants with substantial financial exposure due to medical costs that consume insurance policy thresholds and impendseconomic failure.

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Types of Catastrophic Injuries

There are certain types of catastrophic injuries, but they generally fall in the following categories:

  • Physical injuries such as burns, fractures, and damage to orthopedic function or tissue
  • Spinal cord injuries that affect the spinal cord resulting in permanently limited mobility
  • Cognitive injuries are injuries that involve brain damage and can result in impairment of speech, take away a person’s ability to work, walk, or form new memories.

Catastrophic injuries affect a survivor’s family as well. Not only are they emotionallytaxing for family members, but also physically and financially exhausting. At times, injured victims may require full-time care and have special needs, resulting in some spouses having to quit their jobs— making financial burdens much heavier.

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How Can A Lawyer Help?

Filing a catastrophic personal injury claim can help victims of these accidents recover the emotional and financial costs that this incident may have caused.

Personal injury cases don’t take money directly from the guilty party— instead, these settlements are paid out by their insurance companies. Insurance companies often attempt to limit or deny personal injury claims by any means necessary— so filing a catastrophic injury claim ensures that insurance companies are held accountable for their actions.

Insurance companies understand the financial costs associated with medical bills, and they usually offer victims financial settlements before taking them to court. These initial lump-sum benefits may seem like a reasonable amount, but they’re rarely if ever, enough to cover long-term costs associated with catastrophic injuries. Hiring a personal injury lawyer can help you fight your case and ensure that you receive the appropriate monetary compensation for your damages.

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A personal injury lawyer will be able to help you calculate all your damages by working together with auditors, actuaries, and other monetary experts to define the final sum of your compensation, known as economic damages. The more challenging part is attempting to figure out future financial burdens due to medical expenses, treatments, therapies, and more. Personal injury lawyers will also calculate the loss of income you and your family will have to face and to what extent it will affect your quality of life. This is known as non-economic damages and includes the emotional turmoil, pain, and suffering that a victim and their family must go through due to this injury.

Furthermore, filing personal injury claims makes sure that the party that neglected its duty is held accountable.To file a personal injury claim, a victim needs to be seriously injured by a liable party whose negligence led to the injury. Personal injury claims deter repeat behavior from happening. They show culprits and those who can easily find themselves in a similar situation how important it is to pay attention to and enforce safety standards. As a result, hiring a lawyer to help you with your case will benefit not only you, but also your community.

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Choosing the Right Course of Action

If you’ve been injured and you can’t cover the medical costs, you should look into hiring a personal injury lawyer. Plaintiffs have a limited time within which they can file a lawsuit, known as the statute of limitations. Usually, this begins when the plaintiff becomes injured or discovers the injury.

Statue limitations are established by state law and often vary from injury to injury. Any potential injury case requires a very detailed and intricate understanding of the law. Get professional legal help at Hare | Wynn, Newell & Newton, where they deal with a number of catastrophic personal injury cases, including car accidents, brain and birth injuries, catastrophic injuries,medical malpractice, and medication error, burn injuries, and more. Having helped clients recover at least 3x more than they would have gotten without any assistance from attorneys, Hare|Wynn’s team of lawyers has decades worth of valuable experience.

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