Injury cases can leave victims with extensive medical bills and keep them from returning to full work capacity. No matter how long your injury lasts or whether it leads to a lifelong disability, our lawyers can help you get compensation for what happened to you.
In a personal injury lawsuit, you can recover medical costs, lost wages, and pain and suffering damages. However, insurance companies will often try to block payment and force you to take them and the defendant to court. Our lawyers can represent you in negotiations and fight in court for you.
For a free case assessment, call our personal injury attorneys today at The Martello Law Firm at (914) 685-6950.
How Long Do I Have to File an Injury Claim in New York?
New York’s statute of limitations gives injury victims 3 years to file most injury claims. For medical malpractice claims, the rule is typically 2 years and 6 months. Wrongful death claims must be filed within 2 years.
There are exceptions for both “infancy” and “insanity,” meaning that if the victim is a minor or has a serious mental disability, they get until that goes away before the clock starts running. This means the 3-year clock starts when minors turn 18 or when disabled people improve – if possible.
Sexual abuse claims also get an extended filing deadline until the victim turns 55 years old. This only applies to cases after the law changed; prior cases might use the old law in place at that time.
Do I Have a Case?
A personal injury claim is based on the idea that someone else injured you, and it is only fair for them to pay you back for the harm. Most harms – like medical expenses and lost earnings – are economic and can be reimbursed to put you back in the position you were in before the injury. Others are not reversible – like the pain and suffering of an injury – so a fair value is paid to reimburse you.
Most accidental injury cases can be blamed on someone’s carelessness or inattention. You do not have to prove that they hurt you on purpose. Instead, we look for four elements to sue them for “negligence”:
- A legal duty they owed you
- A breach of that duty
- That the breach caused the accident
If you can meet all of these elements, you have a case.
Examples of Personal Injury Cases
Personal injury cases can involve all sorts of accidental injury cases. Here are two hypothetical examples:
It is illegal to run a stop sign. If someone runs a stop sign and hits you, that makes the accident their fault, and they owe you for your medical bills, property damage, lost wages, and pain and suffering from the crash.
Stores must keep an eye out for spills and clear them up or warn about them in a reasonable time. If you slipped in a puddle you could not see and had no warning of, then the store is responsible – but only if they should have known about the spill and failed to respond in a reasonable time.
These two examples show some important factors:
- Laws can be used to help prove what went wrong
- Some cases involve “reasonableness” standards
- Not every case is clear
- There are exceptions and defenses the other side can use.
That is why it is important to always review your case with a personal injury lawyer. We can dive into the specific facts of your case, looking beyond the basic elements of a case to see how strong your case is, what your chances of success look like, and whether your damages might be reduced in any way.
How is Fault Determined in an Injury Case in Carmel?
When we look at fault, we might have multiple candidates, depending on the situation. The victim might also be a candidate if they did something to contribute to the accident.
For any of the candidates to become at-fault parties, each one must have breached a legal duty and contributed to the accident. For example, if the car in front of you stopped short and you hit them, but then a drunk driver smashed into you going 80, it might seem like everyone was at fault:
- The front driver stopped short
- You were tailgating
- The rear driver was drunk and speeding.
However, if the front driver stopped short to avoid hitting a child in the road, that is a reasonable excuse, and they did not breach a legal duty. That would mean fault is split between you and the rear driver.
Courts can assign partial blame to each party based on how much they contributed to the accident. Victims lose out on any percentage of damages for the fault attributed to them. Defendants split the other damages according to their percentage of fault.
How Much is My Case Worth?
Courts also have to decide how much the claim is worth by looking at the victim’s expenses, pay stubs, financial records, and other evidence to assess economic damages. From there, we can also argue about how the injury was severe enough to cause pain and suffering, putting a value on that.
Your economic damages should also account for future damages, e.g., ongoing medical care needs or lost earnings from your disability. These are harder to calculate than past bills and may require financial experts.
We can use a few different calculation methods to arrive at non-economic damages, making arguments about the overall severity. Often, these are worth as much as or more than the economic damages in your case.
Filing a Lawsuit vs. Insurance Claim
If the defendant had insurance to cover the accident, you can file a claim for damages. Our lawyers can negotiate a fair settlement, but if we cannot reach one, we can take the case to court by filing a lawsuit.
That does not automatically mean the case has to go to trial; most cases settle before getting to that stage.
Call Our Personal Injury Attorneys in Carmel, NY Today
For your free case review, call the personal injury lawyers of The Martello Law Firm by dialing (914) 685-6950.
