Different Kinds of Personal Injury Claims

How many different types of personal injury matters are there?
From relatively minor traffic accidents to catastrophic injury claims, Personal Injury covers a broad spectrum of legal claims Do you need a Personal Injury Attorney for the type of accident you are involved in?

Car Accidents

What is a "serious" accident?
Do I need to see a medical professional for even minor injuries?
Who is legally responsible?
Who is going to pay for the damages to my car?

If you have been injured in an accident involving any type of motor vehicle (a car, bus, truck, motorcycle, etc.) and you were a driver, a passenger, even a pedestrian or bicycle rider, your rights need to be asserted and protected by a professional Personal Injury Attorney. The period of time immediately after an accident can be one of the most stressful in your life, and most often you will need counsel and help in dealing with the multi-billion dollar insurance companies ö who are NOT on your side. Property damage to your vehicle, prompt and competent medical attention from a wide array of medical specialists or dealing with difficult insurance companies, including your own insurance carrier, can add to the stress.

What follows is a short list of the types of accidents I see in my office every day; these are the accidents that change lives, the lives of my clients. Please consider your opportunity to obtain a no charge legal consultation from The LoBELLO LAW FIRM by calling 702.870.8000 now, but especially if your accident occurred in Nevada.

Other than motor vehicle accidents, what do I do if I was injured on a public vehicle; a bus, train or taxi.
Does this make any difference in the damages I can obtain?
How to comprehend the issues related to accidents involving boats, bicycles and motorcycles

The Law of Motorcycle Accidents

Personal Injury Law is very similar to that applied in other accidents, when a motorcycle is involved. It is most important to collect and analyze the facts of a motorcycle accident, which are often unique. Because the facts can be so divergent from other types of accidents, it is especially important that you are represented by a professional Personal Injury Attorney who is competent in handling these specific accident cases.

A WORD ABOUT CONTINGENCY FEES

I Have a Slip and Fall Case, Can I Make a Claim?

Why am I being told that slips or trips and fall accidents are almost impossible to prove?
Why isn't a property owner responsible for my slip or trip and fall?
Are there issues that I am not aware of in premise liability law?

Many personal injuries occur when people slip or trip and fall on property owned by another. Sometimes people slip and fall at a local convenience store, or at the large hotels in Las Vegas, even in their own neighborhood grocery store. These incidents result from many different scenarios. People trip and fall on broken or uneven sidewalks, in markets, even on private property. Your rights may depend not only on where and how you fell, but what you were doing when you fell. For example, some states still adhere to the classification of a person injured on property. Under these archaic statutes, trespassers on property cannot recover. An injured person in these states must be classified as an invitee or business invitee in order to recover damages for injury.

If you have had a serious slip and fall or trip and fall, it may be because you were not watching where you were going. This is another area of the law where "comparative fault"(discussed above) comes into play. If you were not watching out for your own well-being, you were at least in part, responsible for your injuries. That is what makes slip or trip and fall cases very difficult to prove. Take the case of slipping on an item in the aisle of a grocery store. The analysis includes whether the item was on the floor long enough to put the owner on notice of its presence, and long enough to provide an opportunity to the owner to clean it up. Imagine being told that if the banana peel or grape was not smashed and spread out over a distance, you have no case! Welcome to the arena of slip/trip and fall personal injury law.

If you have been the victim of a personal injury either through a defective product, negligence, an accident involving a car, motorcycle, bicycle, or even as a pedestrian, you may have a claim against the party causing your injuries and damages. Remember, however, that product liability law and medical malpractice law differs significantly from traffic accident law, and great expertise is generally needed to pursue these claims.

What is Strict Products Liability?

Learn why a company is legally responsible for dangerous products. What is strict liability? Can a company be held responsible for punitive damages?

Many years ago people were severely injured by products which had been negligently designed or manufactured. The law of Strict Product Liability developed as a result. As a general rule, in most sates, if a manufacturer designs, builds, sells or markets a product which contains a defect, that causes injury to a user or consumer, the manufacturer, whether it is a person or a company, may be held strictly liable (responsible) in tort, for injuries, damages and/or financial losses caused by the defect. "Strict" liability is different from the general liability in a negligence case. Strict liability is like that involved in a parking ticket. If the peter meter has expired, you are strictly liable for the parking fine - period.

Products can generally be defective either the way they were manufactured (manufacturing defect) or in the way they were designed (design defect). Sometimes products can be said to contain a defect in packaging or warning; in that there was a failure to provide to the user adequate instructions or warnings. A manufacturing defect is quite different from a design defect, and it takes an Attorney knowledgeable in Products Liability law to determine the difference. Most often these cases will also involve expert witnesses to testify regarding the product's defects (see Trials).

People who are injured by a defective product can generally recover the damages they sustain as a direct result of the injuries. These can include lost wages or earnings, lost vacation time or lost sick leave, the costs of their medical expenses, any permanent or partial disability, as well as more subjective, non-economic elements of damages such as pain and suffering. But, be advised that litigation in product liability law is very complicated, and must be handled by an Attorney who has experience and expertise in this area of law. The reason is, that for an Attorney to successfully prove the defective nature of a product, for example, where the defect is one related to manufacture, the Attorney must learn every facet of the manufacturing process, and be able to ascertain exactly what went wrong.

In the case of a design defect, the Attorney must learn all of the design features, and whether there were better, safer designs, which could have been used, for about the same cost of manufacture. The failure to use a safer product, if the cost would have been about the same, may result in design defect liability.

What's all this About Medical Malpractice?

What happens my doctor has made a mistake while treating me?
Can the doctor be held responsible?
Are doctors protected by state law limiting damages for their mistakes?

Medical negligence or malpractice is a part of Personal Injury law. Medical malpractice is a negligent act or omission committed by a health care provider generally a doctor, nurse, dentist, technician, physician's assistant, hospital, or hospital employee - whose conduct in the performance of his duty falls below an accepted standard of care when compared with those of similar training and experience, in the same general geographic area and which has resulted in injury or harm to the health care provider's patient.

Most medical malpractice cases are based on negligence concepts, and the same type of analysis applies. (As contrasted with reckless or intentionally caused injuries) The analysis is whether a patient was injured or harmed because the acts or omissions of a health care provider fell below the acceptable standards of skill and care, in accordance with the skill, experience and training of that provider, when compared to others in the field. These "standards of care" may vary significantly from state to state, or even city-to-city. For example, a psychiatrist in a small mid-western town, may not be held to the same standard of care as a psychiatrist on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Of course, health care providers cannot guarantee the successful outcome of the medical treatment they provide. But Attorneys also recognize that malpractice claims do not exist only because a specific treatment did not succeed. Medical malpractice cases also include other wrongs such as a mis-diagnosis or failure to diagnose a patient's injury, illness or other condition. Mis-diagnosis or failure to diagnose may have occurred because tests and procedures which are customarily were not used. A doctor may also prescribe a medication which was not approved for his patient's particular condition.

As with ordinary negligence claims state law limits when these claims can be filed in their statutes of limitation. These laws provide that a person injured through the medical negligence of a doctor has a specified amount of time to file a claim or lawsuit. Statutes of limitation make sure that claims are made within a reasonable period of time, while the medical condition which was negligently treated or missed is still relevant to the condition of the patient.

If you think that you have been injured by the medical negligence of a health care provider you should consult immediately with The LoBELLO LAW FIRM, experienced in personal injury law, and knowledgeable in medical malpractice. These cases can be as complicated as those involving defective products, and the attorney must learn all he can about the medicine, treatment, tests, and standards of care involved, and each case is factually different.

e-mail: mlobello@lobellolaw.com

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