Chatham County Catastrophic Injury Lawyer
Any accident can leave you suffering a few bumps, bruises, and scrapes, but some, unfortunately, render much more serious consequences. As a result, your day-to-day life can change in what seems like the blink of an eye, forcing you to alter your lifestyle to accommodate the harm you have suffered.
Consulting a Chatham County catastrophic injury lawyer could be the best decision you make following a life-altering accident that affects you and your loved ones. A skilled personal injury attorney could help you think carefully about your needs in the short-term and long-term and work together with you to develop the best plan of action to protect your rights.
Common Catastrophic Injuries
What constitutes a catastrophic injury can vary, but many times such an injury involves one or more of the following:
- Spinal cord injury, which can cause neurological impairments that may affect the respiratory, urinary, and gastrointestinal systems in addition to causing paralysis
- Traumatic brain injury, which can impair movement, thinking, memory, speech, and emotional function
- Severe burns, which may require extensive surgeries and medical procedures
Catastrophic injuries can also lead to vision and hearing loss, severely broken bones, amputations, and even death.
Compensable Damages
According to the American Medical Association, a catastrophic injury is one which involves debilitating or disabling damage to the brain, spine, or spinal cord, including spinal or skull fractures. Such injuries may significantly compromise a person’s physical and mental functions.
The expenses people incur following a catastrophic injury can quickly mount. Not only could they face medical costs for hospitalizations, surgeries, physician care, and physical therapy, but they could also have to contend with the financial burden of rearranging their lives to accommodate this unexpected change.
How Damages Can Help Following a Catastrophic Injury?
Accommodations following an injury might include, for example, installing ramps in their home, purchasing mobility equipment, and hiring home health workers to assist them with everyday tasks like cooking and bathing. Moreover, lost wages from being unable to work can make it especially difficult to pay these fees if insurance fails to cover them, and that, too, can take its toll mentally and emotionally.
Fortunately, all these economic damages may be recoverable in a civil negligence lawsuit if someone’s catastrophic injury was the fault of someone else. In addition, many catastrophic injury victims may be able to recover non-economic damages as well for intangible losses such as pain and suffering, loss of consortium, and loss of enjoyment of life. A seasoned Chatham County catastrophic injury lawyer could assist an injured person in recovering the damages that they deserve.
What is the Deadline to File a Catastrophic Injury Case?
O.C.G.A. §9-3-33 specifies that all personal injury claims must be made within two years of the date of the accident in which the filing party was harmed. However, injuries may not surface immediately, and sometimes only become apparent after some time has passed. This may take weeks and even months, so it is important for accident victims to carefully monitor their health and keep track of it and how it changes for the worse to safeguard their right to file suit.
Let a Chatham County Catastrophic Injury Attorney Help
A catastrophic injury can occur on the highway, at work, in a shopping mall, at a movie theater—essentially, anywhere you go in your daily life. You may be able to recover compensation if you suffer a catastrophic injury due to another person’s negligence, but you may need an attorney who could thoughtfully present and prepare your case to maximize your chances of a positive outcome.
You do not have to go it alone—a Chatham County catastrophic injury lawyer is available, willing, and able to help. Call today to schedule a free case review and get professional help getting your life back on track.
