Suffering a personal injury in LaGrange can not only cost you financially, but it can also impact you emotionally long after. Our lawyers can help you get compensation for your current damages and future losses you are likely to incur.
Car accidents, dangerous products, and negligent healthcare providers are common reasons to file a lawsuit, but regardless of how someone caused your injuries, you should contact our team as soon as you can to file your lawsuit. Unless a rare exception applies, you will only have two years to file your claim under the state’s statute of limitations. Our team can identify this date and file your complaint before it passes. After your lawsuit is filed, we will know what evidence to gather so your claim has the best chance of settling without the added expenses of a trial.
Contact Rice Law at (470) 287-3070 today for a free case review with our personal injury lawyers.
Common Personal Injuries and How They Are Caused in LaGrange, GA
When someone suffers personal injuries in LaGrange, it is rarely for no reason. Behind most accidents that result in personal injuries is another person’s negligence. Sometimes, the negligent conduct is obvious, such as running a stop sign and crashing into you. Other times, determining who to hold liable in a lawsuit is unclear because several parties might be at fault, or the negligence goes unnoticed for some time, like medical malpractice incidents. No matter how a person causes your injuries, our personal injury lawyers have the necessary skill and experience to identify the responsible parties and the damages you deserve. It is critical to have a team on your side that understands the complexity inherent in each type of personal injury claim.
Vehicle Accidents
Numerous accidents occur in LaGrange due to negligent drivers. Some drivers speed, reducing their reaction time in emergencies. Others are distracted by their phones, losing focus on the road ahead. Unfortunately, some choose to engage in truly dangerous behavior by driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, leading to serious and even fatalities. If a family member was taken from you by a negligent driver, we can help you file a wrongful death lawsuit against the at-fault driver.
We will also investigate whether the driver was on the job at the time of the accident. If they were, we would not only name them in your lawsuit but also their employer since they are responsible for their employee’s negligent actions. This concept, known as “vicarious liability,” allows employers to be held accountable for their employees’ negligence if it occurred while they were performing their job duties. For example, if a truck driver disregards the regulations regarding driving hours, both the driver and the trucking company can face legal action. You might be entitled to punitive damages to punish the defendants in such cases.
Negligent drivers are not just a threat to other drivers, as their carelessness also puts motorcyclists, bike riders, and pedestrians at risk. Our team is prepared to help you recover damages, regardless of the vehicle accident in which you were injured.
Premises Liability Accidents
We can also help you hold negligent individuals or businesses liable in a lawsuit if you were injured on their property. Property owners and others with a legal duty to keep the premises safe can be sued if they fail to take reasonable steps to keep the premises safe or discover dangers likely to arise on the premises. For instance, if you slip and fall in a spill at the store, you might not know who made the spill, but if it was left out too long, the store is ultimately responsible for the hazardous condition. In most cases, property owners have a duty to inspect for dangers if reasonable under the circumstances.
After getting injured on another’s property, report your accident to the property owner or manager on duty immediately after if your injuries allow. If your accident occurred in a business, the manager will likely make an accident report, which might include important details you did not know or forgot later on when litigating your case. They will usually also communicate with their bosses and managers regarding the accident, so internal communications might exist discussing your accident. Our team can gather these reports and records after filing your lawsuit, which might greatly help when proving liability.
Product Liability Accidents
Dangerous products are another common reason for filing a personal injury lawsuit. Countless products that we rely on daily could be negligently designed or manufactured, leading to devastating accidents and even fatalities. Cars are sometimes designed with dangerous components that should be recalled, while some medications are negligently produced. We can help you file a product liability claim against the designer or manufacturer if a product injures you.
Some products are hazardous right from the start, and each model carries the same flaw. This happens when the product is negligently designed with dangerous components or inherent flaws. If so, we will file your claim against the product’s designer.
Other products are negligently manufactured. The design is adequate, but the manufacturer uses substandard materials and parts or makes some other mistake in the manufacturing process. We will file your lawsuit against the product’s manufacturer in these situations.
You can also pursue a product liability claim if the product lacks adequate warnings or instructions. Some goods cannot be made safe regardless of their design. For instance, lawnmowers are inherently dangerous as a byproduct of their function to cut grass. If adequate warning labels were not affixed to the mower or the instructions were lacking or confusing, and it caused the owner to get injured, the designer, manufacturer, or both might need to be sued. In some cases, we will name a retailer as a defendant in the lawsuit if they had an opportunity to warn the customer but failed to do so before the accident.
Medical Malpractice
Medical malpractice is a significant concern for our team, often leading to some of the most serious injury claims we handle in LaGrange. Typically, establishing the duty of care in these cases is fairly clear, as healthcare professionals are expected to deliver a standard of care that aligns with their peers with similar training and experience. When a healthcare provider deviates from this standard, whether through negligence, improper treatment, or failure to attend to a patient’s needs, they should be held accountable for their actions in a medical malpractice claim.
Determining which healthcare providers have failed in their duty of care can be quite complex, especially when multiple errors occur during a patient’s treatment. Imagine a situation where a surgeon accidentally leaves a surgical instrument inside a patient’s body after a procedure, leading to serious complications. At the same time, another physician, responsible for carefully counting the surgical tools before the operation wraps up, misses the missing item, making the situation even more challenging.
Moreover, when nursing staff overlook crucial indicators that point to a decline in a patient’s condition, their lack of attentiveness further complicates the situation. In these instances, each healthcare provider can be held liable for their individual roles in contributing to the patient’s overall harm. You will want a legal team with extensive experience holding doctors and hospitals accountable and who understands the complex nature of medical malpractice lawsuits.
Important Legal Issues You Should Know When Filing a Personal Injury Lawsuit in LaGrange, GA
No matter if you were involved in one of the accidents discussed above or negligently injured in another manner, you should contact our lawyers immediately to begin your claim. We will go over the important issues that can impact your lawsuit, such as the statute of limitations and the evidence we need to claim and evaluate your damages. Our team’s experience also allows us to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your case if we were to go to trial, but most claims are settled before this becomes necessary. The key is to settle for nothing less than what you deserve.
The Statute of Limitations
One of the most pressing issues early on in nearly every personal injury lawsuit is the statute of limitations. Under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33, injury victims have only two years to file a lawsuit, and the time starts counting down the moment they are injured in most cases. Few exceptions will give you more time to file if the statute of limitations runs in your case. In most cases, the court will dismiss lawsuits filed after the statute of limitations, cutting plaintiffs off from any legal means of being compensated.
This rule is in place for several reasons. First, the law assumes that legitimate claims will be filed sooner after an incident since victims typically want the compensation and justice they are entitled to without delay. Plaintiffs will also be more likely to recover and access relevant evidence, including witnesses with fresh memories of the accident. Third, defendants are also entitled to a measure of justice by having claims filed against them relatively soon after the accident rather than years later. After all, some defendants want to repair the damage they caused and move on as soon as possible.
As mentioned, a few exceptions will “toll,” or pause, the statute of limitations. For instance, children who suffer personal injuries will have until their 20th birthday to file a lawsuit since § 9-3-90(b) gives them two years upon turning 18 to bring an action. This exception also gives individuals with a mental illness or intellectual disability two years from the date it is removed to file a claim, according to § 9-3-90(a).
However, some personal injuries are not immediately obvious. Going back to our medical malpractice example above, you might not notice a foreign object in you until after the limitations period closed. If you could not reasonably discover the error before that, we can argue for additional time to file under the “discovery” rule. However, this exception is rare, so it is best to let our team assess the likelihood of applying it.
How Your Lawsuit is Filed
Most people know that a lawsuit is usually handled in court but are unsure how it gets there. Our team will gather some evidence and draft a “complaint” that will then be filed in the proper court. The complaint is the formal document that states why you are pursuing compensation, who caused your injuries, and the damages you have incurred and will need to restore you to your previous state. Once the court accepts the complaint and it is served on the liable parties, your lawsuit is officially underway.
After Filing Your Lawsuit
After your lawsuit is filed, you will mostly focus on your treatment and recovery while our attorneys handle the legal matters. While you are treating, we will gather additional evidence not collected before the complaint was filed. During the “discovery” phase of your lawsuit, we will receive evidence from the defendant to further strengthen your claim. This includes questioning the defendant about the accident and their actions during it, which we will conduct in writing and in person during depositions. You will also usually need to answer questions during this time, but we can prepare you before any session with opposing counsel and will be by your side throughout.
At that point, we should start receiving settlement offers. However, the first offers rarely compensate you for your total losses. Many insurance companies want to test how desperate victims are to accept a settlement so that they get money quickly. While it might be better to take an offer rather than go to court, our team will review every offer to determine if it is worth considering. If it does not cover economic losses and non-economic damages, we can counteroffer or reject it outright and wait for something better. We can always go to trial if a settlement cannot be reached.
Contact Our LaGrange, GA Personal Injury Attorneys Today for Help Filing Your Claim for Compensation
Call (470) 287-3070 for a free case evaluation with Rice Law’ personal injury lawyers today.