Accidents that cause paralysis are devastating because your life—and your family’s lives—change in a heartbeat. Many people with paralysis live rich and fruitful lives, but doing so requires adjustment, and adjustment requires time and money.
When someone else’s negligence causes the incident that led to your injury, they should pay compensation for your losses. However, you must prove their careless or reckless conduct caused the harm.
Work with a Mesa paralysis injury lawyer to prove your claim. Our experienced catastrophic injury attorneys could assert claims against all the responsible parties and ensure you receive appropriate compensation that allows you to move forward after the accident.
How Negligence Can Cause a Paralyzing Injury
Someone is negligent if they do not exercise the same caution and care that a reasonable person would in the same circumstances. Gross negligence is reckless behavior without consideration for the risk it poses to others. When an injured person proves that another person or a company or government was negligent and the negligence directly caused their injuries, the negligent parties owe compensation.
Medical conditions like cerebral palsy and stroke are common causes of paralysis. Paralysis after an accident is usually caused by a spinal cord injury. Vehicular accidents of all kinds are the leading cause of spinal cord injuries. These include incidents involving cars, trucks, motorcycles, dirt bikes, and ATVs. Falls from a height, gunshot wounds, violent attacks, and sports injuries are the other leading causes.
Negligence is almost always a factor in events like car accidents and sports injuries. Birth injuries leading to cerebral palsy could be the result of medical negligence. Falls that lead to spinal cord injuries often happen at work sites and could also involve negligence. A Mesa attorney could focus an accident investigation on identifying every party whose failure to use reasonable care contributed to the incident.
Damages in Paralysis Cases
When negligence causes an injury, the responsible parties must pay the injured person’s losses. These include all medical and treatment-related expenses, lost income, property damage, plus money to compensate the injured person for their diminished quality of life. In a paralysis injury case, the losses can be substantial.
When someone’s actions were grossly negligent or intentional, punitive damages might be available. Punitive damages are an extra sum the judge or jury awards to punish bad conduct. Carelessness or thoughtless behavior does not merit punitive damages, but intentional, reckless actions, like driving drunk, could result in a punitive damages award.
Treating paralysis injuries and living with the condition is expensive. A responsible party’s insurance will pay only up to the policy holder’s coverage limits, which are often insufficient to cover an injured person’s needs. Accordingly, a Mesa attorney will bring claims against as many parties as possible, to increase the available pool of insurance coverage after a paralyzing event.
Acting Quickly is Critical
When someone suffers a devastating injury the potentially responsible parties are often proactive. They might approach the injured person even before they have been released from the hospital to offer a quick cash settlement. These offers are usually far less than the actual value of the injured person’s claim.
Engaging a Mesa attorney immediately after the paralyzing incident prevents responsible parties and their representatives from making a direct approach. They must negotiate through the attorney, relieving stress on the injured person and their family, and ensuring negotiations proceed in good faith.
In addition, working with an attorney ensures compliance with the legal time limits that apply to injury cases. In general, injured people have two years from the accident to file a lawsuit seeking compensation. However, Arizona Revised Statutes § 12-821.01 requires an injured person to notify a government defendant of a claim within six months of the injury. A government agency might be a defendant if an accident happened on public property or involved a vehicle like a garbage truck or city bus.
Pursue Compensation After a Paralyzing Injury With a Mesa Attorney
An accident that causes paralysis is life-changing. You will require time and support to recover and thrive after the accident.
A Mesa paralysis injury lawyer could provide the support you need while protecting your rights and pursuing just compensation from the responsible parties. Call now to speak with a committed attorney from the Phillips Law Group.
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