If you were injured, you might be left with medical bills, you may be stuck out of work, and you may be dealing with extensive pain and suffering from your injuries. This situation can make many feel hopeless, but there may be chances to get compensation that can provide you with the financial security that you deserve.
Personal injury lawsuits are legal actions that may be available to a person who suffers an injury caused by the negligence of another person or entity. To succeed in court, you will have to demonstrate the four key elements of a negligence claim: duty of care, breach of duty, causation, and damages.
If you feel you may have valid grounds for a personal injury lawsuit, you do not have long to wait. Call (718) 841-0083 today to get your first case evaluation for free from the dedicated Flatbush personal injury attorneys at The Carrion Law Firm.
Proving Negligence in a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Flatbush
When another person or entity causes you injury, you can seek compensation by filing a lawsuit against them in court. To win, you typically must be able to demonstrate that they were negligent, and that their negligence caused the accident that injured you. Below are summaries of the four key elements of any negligence claim: duty of care, breach of duty, causation, and damages.
Duty of Care
A duty of care is a legal obligation that guides how one person or entity must act towards another in order to avoid an accident (and liability for that accident). These duties are created and defined by the relationship between the party that owes the duty and the party to whom they owe the duty. For instance, doctors owe different duties to their patients than bus drivers owe to their passengers. Your Flatbush personal injury lawyer can help you learn more about what specific duties were involved in your injury case.
Breach of Duty
The next step in proving negligence is showing that the defendant breached the duty that they owed you. Essentially, this comes down to demonstrating the difference between what was expected from the duty and what the defendant actually did (or didn’t do). Flatbush personal injury lawyers will typically introduce expert testimony to explain industry standards in cases that are more complex, such as medical malpractice or defective products cases.
Causation
Once you have established that the defendant breached their duty that they owed to you, you must then be able to prove that their breach led to the incident that left you injured. This is referred to as cause. In New York, cause is split into two criteria: cause-in-fact and proximate cause. Cause-in-fact essentially means that the incident would not have happened “but for” the negligence, and proximate cause means that there were no superseding or external causes that might divert blame from the negligence.
Damages
To recover in a lawsuit, you must show that the incident actually caused you compensable harm. Compensable harm is any injury that you could obtain damages for in a lawsuit. This is one of many reasons why you should seek medical attention as soon as possible after suffering a personal injury.
Time Limit on Filing a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Flatbush
If you believe that you may have a valid personal injury claim in Flatbush, you should not wait long to act. The State of New York places time limits on the lifespan of these opportunities through laws known as statutes of limitations.
In New York, the statute of limitations for personal injury lawsuits generally provides potential plaintiffs with up to three years to file their formal complaint in court. This period usually begins on the date that you sustained your injury.
There are a few narrow exceptions to the three-year deadline that may apply to your case, so if the window has already passed, you should still look into whether you have a claim. However, it is always better to get started on your case sooner rather than later. Acting early allows for easier preservation of evidence, avoids missing any critical deadlines, and gets you the compensation that you are owed sooner.
Compensation Available in a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Flatbush
If you are successful in your personal injury claim, you are rewarded with damages. Damages are how courts compensate injury victims for their harms, both personal and financial, and may also be a way to punish particularly reckless defendants for reprehensible behavior.
Economic Damages
Economic damages are how the court compensates the victim for their direct financial losses stemming from their injury. This not only includes the costs of dealing with the injuries themselves, such as medical care, but also the costs of accounting for how these injuries impact you, such as having to take time off of work or change career paths to account for the effects on your functional capacity.
Noneconomic Damages
You can also seek compensation through a lawsuit for the pain and suffering that you experience personally. This could come from the consequences of your injuries or the trauma of the injurious experience itself. Because these damages don’t come directly off of receipts or invoices, you may find it more difficult to calculate noneconomic damages in your case without the help of a seasoned Flatbush personal injury attorney.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages are not available in every personal injury case. However, when a defendant’s conduct rises above simple negligence to the point of recklessness or intentionally harmful conduct, a court in Flatbush may determine that additional punishment is necessary to restore equity and caution others against similar behavior in the future.
Frequently Filed Personal Injury Cases in Flatbush
Some of the most common kinds of personal injury cases stem from vehicle accidents. Various vehicles are on the road at any given time, and different kinds of vehicles may lead to drastically different accidents. Your damages, the identity of the defendant, and the evidence we need to prove your claims may depend on what kind of auto accident you were involved in.
Car Accidents
Ordinary car accidents are perhaps the most frequently filed vehicle accident cases. People are on the road almost every day. Whether you are commuting to work, driving to school, or running errands, an accident might happen anywhere. While ordinary car collisions are common, they should not be disregarded. Many victims are badly injured. Many others do not survive. Typically, the driver who caused the accident may be held responsible, although this can become very complicated in multi-vehicle accidents.
Generally, car accident victims in New York must file insurance claims. Under I.S.C. Law § 5104(a), drivers must file no-fault insurance claims through their personal injury protection (PIP) coverage, which is required of all drivers. A lawsuit is only allowed if the injured driver can prove they experienced a “serious injury” as described under § 5102(d). Serious injuries often involve permanent or long-term injuries, although non-permanent injuries may also be considered serious. Your attorney can help you determine whether you are eligible to file a civil lawsuit for a car accident.
Truck Crashes
Trucks, eighteen-wheelers, and semi-trailers are enormously powerful vehicles. They are very heavy and capable of moving at high speeds, making them very dangerous on the road. Truckers must have special commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) to operate such giant vehicles, and they do not work the same way as ordinary cars.
Truck drivers often must be careful about how they load cargo in trailers, as unbalanced cargo could cause the trailer and the truck to topple over. Truckers must also be careful about how they make certain turns. Truckers usually must make wider turns to avoid crushing other vehicles between the truck and trailer. This is often called a “squeezing accident.”
If you are injured in a truck crash, your injuries and damages might be off the charts. Not only can our personal injury lawyers help you have the trucker held responsible, but the trucking company that employed the driver may also be held responsible.
Bus Accidents
In a place like Flatbush, Brooklyn, buses are everywhere. Many buses in New York City are part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and are integral to the city’s public transportation network. Many other buses are private charter or tour buses, often used by tourists. If the bus involved in your accident was a private bus, we can help you sue the driver and their employer. MTA bus accident cases are a bit more complex.
We can help you sue the bus driver and the MTA for an accident, but there are additional legal hoops to jump through. For example, under G.M.U. Law § 50-e(1)(a), when suing a public entity, we must submit a notice of your claim to the defendant within 90 days of the accident. This is an extremely tight deadline. If we do not submit notice of your claim on time, your case might not be able to move forward.
Motorcycle Collisions
Maybe you were not inside a car at all when you were injured in an auto accident. If you are riding a motorcycle, you might be more vulnerable to injuries in the event of an accident. Motorcycle riders are not shielded inside an enclosed vehicle. Their only protection is usually a helmet and any protective gear they are wearing. Motorcycle accidents often happen because drivers in cars are not paying attention or looking out for motorcycles. Since motorcycles are smaller, they may be more easily overlooked, especially if they are lost in a driver’s blind spot. Even so, drivers must drive with reasonable safety, which means keeping an eye out for motorcycles.
It is important to note that motorcycles are excluded from New York’s no-fault insurance requirements. This means that, if you wish to file a civil lawsuit after a motorcycle crash, you would not have to prove that you have a serious injury.
Supporting Your Flatbush Personal Injury Case with Evidence
To support your personal injury case, we need evidence of the defendant’s negligence. Considering just how many different personal injury claims there are, it makes sense that evidence will also vary greatly. However, some evidence tends to come up more often than others and should be discussed with your attorney.
First, we should gather information and details from the accident scene. This may include photos and videos taken by people present at the accident. Maybe you snapped some photos of the damaged vehicles to send to your insurance company. Maybe you or someone else had a dashcam that recorded most of the accident. Such evidence may greatly strengthen your case.
Physical objects might also be important. Perhaps you were injured by a defective product, like a kitchen appliance. In such a case, we would need the faulty appliance as evidence. We should also have it inspected to determine exactly what was wrong with it and whether it was damaged or poorly designed. If other items or objects played a role in your accident, even a small role, we must collect them.
We should also check for dangerous conditions at the accident scene. If the unsafe conditions on the land or property directly caused your injuries, we should try to get evidence of those unsafe conditions. If you took pictures of the hazardous conditions, those photos may be very important. If you did not, we can find other evidence.
Evidence does not have to be something we can hold up in front of a jury. Testimony is often very powerful and may convince a jury of your claims. Your testimony and witness testimony should be explored with your lawyer. First, we should track down people who were at the accident scene or might otherwise be connected to it. Next, we should interview potential witnesses to see if they have valuable information that may help your case.
Discuss Your Case with Our Flatbush Personal Injury Lawyers Today
When you reach out to the seasoned Flatbush personal injury attorneys at The Carrion Law Firm today, you can obtain your first case evaluation for free. To learn more about our firm and the services we provide, dial (718) 841-0083 today.