Frederick, MD Personal Injury Lawyer

A personal injury can present major obstacles to victims’ ability to enjoy their lives and perform their duties at work, resulting in immense damages. Fortunately, these damages are compensable via lawsuits.

Our experienced lawyers can help victims pursue payment from the parties responsible for their injuries. The amount of monetary damages recovered in your case depends on several factors, such as the severity of your injury, the medical expenses you have incurred and are expected to incur, and your lost wages. Our lawyers will also estimate your non-economic damages and factor those losses into your deserved recovery. We can strategically prepare your lawsuit and anticipate proving the four crucial elements of personal injury claims so we can establish the defendant’s liability if your case does not settle out of court.

Call Rice, Murtha & Psoras at (410) 694-7291 to discuss your case for free and confidentially with our personal injury lawyers.

What Constitutes a Personal Injury Case in Frederick, MD?

Victims may file personal injury lawsuits if injured because of someone else’s negligent or reckless conduct. This area of law compensates victims of several types of accidents, including slip and falls due to negligent property maintenance, motor vehicle crashes due to negligent drivers, and construction accidents due to defective products. Generally, if you suffer injuries due to another person’s negligence, you may obtain compensation for damages related to those injuries.

If you believe you have grounds to file a personal injury lawsuit, you should contact our lawyers as soon as possible so we can assess your case and help you take the right steps toward payment. Not all accidents and injuries are obviously due to negligence right away and may require further investigation. For example, if a household appliance malfunctions and injures you, inspecting it for possible defects is important, as the manufacturer might be liable for your injuries. Our lawyers can confirm if you have a cause of action immediately after an accident so you can initiate your case as soon as possible.

Types of Personal Injury Cases Our Attorneys Handle in Frederick, MD

Our attorneys handle many types of personal injury lawsuits for victims who need compensatory damages, including those brought for car crashes, falls, medical negligence, and defective products.

Car Accident Cases

A high number of personal injury lawsuits are filed after car accidents. In Maryland, negligent drivers can be sued for collisions they cause. For example, suppose a negligent driver ran a red light and hit your car, injuring you in the process. In that case, you could claim damages against the at-fault party because they were negligent in running a stoplight. While this is a common cause of car accidents in Maryland, drivers might violate traffic rules in many other ways, such as by driving while drunk, distracted, or fatigued.

Pedestrian Accident Cases

Pedestrian accidents are another type of personal injury case that our lawyers frequently handle. When careless drivers hit pedestrians, catastrophic harm can occur. Our team can help victims identify at-fault drivers and build their claims while they focus on their physical recoveries. Victims do not have the same built-in protections cars afford as pedestrians, increasing their risk of suffering fatal or life-altering injuries during accidents.

Motorcycle Accident Cases

Victims of motorcycle accidents can file lawsuits against the people responsible for their crashes and injuries. Many motorcycle collisions happen because careless drivers do not notice riders sharing the roadways and might not check their blind spots for smaller vehicles when changing lanes. Injured bikers can call our personal injury lawyers for help with their cases, particularly if Maryland’s pure contributory fault rules threaten to bar them from recovering damages.

Slip and Fall Cases

Additionally, slip and fall accidents are a common cause of action for personal injury lawsuits. These cases can be filed when victims are injured because of property owners’ careless maintenance of their premises. For instance, a slip and fall lawsuit may be brought against an apartment owner who caused an injury by failing to clear debris from their building’s stairwell. Slip and fall victims can contact our lawyers for help evaluating the strength of their claims and holding negligent property owners accountable. Because negligent parties often have access to accident scenes afterward, and victims may not, photographing the area is important. This can let victims preserve evidence of hazardous conditions, which our lawyers can use during settlement negotiations or trials.

Medical Malpractice Cases

A medical malpractice case is also a type of personal injury lawsuit. These cases seek to compensate patients injured because their physicians do not adhere to appropriate standards of care. In order to file a successful medical malpractice claim, you must have sustained more than an unfavorable outcome from your treatment. Rather, you must be able to prove that you were injured because your doctor acted with negligence.

Medical malpractice lawsuits can be complicated. Expert witness testimony is typically required to show that a defendant acted carelessly while administering care. Support from our experienced personal injury lawyers can be very helpful when pursuing payment through a medical malpractice claim, particularly when obtaining and organizing relevant hospital records for your case.

Defective Product Cases

Personal injury cases may also be brought against sellers and manufacturers of defective products. You may be entitled to damages if you were injured because a product was not designed, manufactured, or marketed appropriately. For example, you may suffer an electrocution caused by a malfunctioning household appliance. In that case, our lawyers may be able to recover financial compensation from the defective product’s manufacturer. Suppose you were hurt by a product that did not operate properly. In that case, you should seek immediate medical attention, keep the product and any packaging or receipts, and contact our lawyers to initiate your case.

Determining the Filing Deadline for Your Frederick, MD Personal Injury Case

In most cases, injury victims must file their lawsuits within three years, or they risk being barred from recovering compensation by the court. We appreciate the importance of victims meeting this deadline and can help them do so by prioritizing their compensation claims.

Car accidents, defective products, and slip and fall lawsuits must be filed within three years of an injury, according to Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. Art., § 5-101. The statute of limitations for medical malpractice lawsuits is five years from the date of injury or three years from the date of discovery, whichever comes sooner, according to § 5-109. If the victim was a minor when injured or did not realize their injuries right away, our lawyers can determine if tolling exceptions apply that would push back the filing deadline for their claim.

Generally speaking, victims should operate under the assumption that they only have three years from an accident’s date to file their lawsuits in court. Relying on a possible tolling exception could make you miss the true filing deadline for your case, blocking you from holding a negligent party financially accountable for your injuries and damages.

To ensure we do not miss the deadline for your financial recovery, we will confirm the final date by which you can bring your claim and proceed accordingly. Intentionally preserving important evidence and launching cases as soon as possible is advisable. Otherwise, relevant proof might be lost or degraded, potentially weakening claims even if they are filed on time.

What Counts as Negligence in Frederick, MD Personal Injury Claims?

Defendants in personal injury cases act negligently when they fail to adhere to their duties of care. A duty of care is a legal obligation to act reasonably to avoid harming others.

One of the most common examples of a duty of care is the one drivers owe one another. Drivers must obey traffic laws and operate their vehicles with reasonable care. Many other types of duties of care exist, however. For example, dog owners should prevent their pets from harming others, property owners must perform proper upkeep and maintenance for their premises to ensure visitors’ safety, and manufacturers must ensure their products are safe for consumers.

When someone breaches their duty of care, those injured by their breach may pursue monetary damages for the harm they sustained. If you were hurt because of another person’s careless or reckless behavior, then you can reach out to our injury lawyers for help determining if you have a strong case. We can start by evaluating the defendant’s conduct and negligence during the accident, as well as any physical evidence you happened to preserve from the scene, like photos or videos.

Proving Causation in Frederick, MD Personal Injury Cases

Additionally, to recover payment through a personal injury case, you must be able to show that your injuries are connected to the defendant’s negligent behavior. We may use many different types of evidence to show causation.

Witness statements, photos from accident scenes, and surveillance footage may all be used to prove fault for a personal injury. However, collecting the evidence necessary to establish causation can be difficult without the assistance of our attorneys. We can quickly schedule interviews with those who witnessed the accident, subpoena or informally request surveillance footage so it is not deleted, and enlist experts who may be able to reconstruct the accident scene to help us prove causation.

Proving Damages from Personal Injuries Suffered in Frederick, MD

The final element of personal injury cases is proving that a victim incurred real damages because of the accident and the defendant’s negligence. This requires our lawyers to carefully assess victims’ financial losses, most likely starting with their hospital expenses.

Using your medical records and hospital bills, we can show a timeline of your injuries, beginning with when you went to the emergency room for treatment. Going to the hospital immediately after suffering injuries is important; otherwise, proving the previous element of causation might be challenging. Your initial hospital records should closely align with the accident’s date and time, and your ongoing medical records can outline the specific treatments you have received since.

In addition to proving your hospital expenses through copies of bills, our lawyers must prove your lost wages. We can use medical expert statements to confirm that you cannot work at your previous job or earning capacity and your income statements to confirm your exact lost wages. Victims can seek compensation for current and future lost wages in their claims, and our lawyers can estimate these damages on their behalf.

Non-economic damages are another type of compensation available to injury victims. Maryland’s limit for non-economic damages is high, and we can see if it might somewhat restrict your recovery after calculating your intangible losses. When assessing non-economic damages, we may consider various factors, such as whether a victim’s injuries are permanent and, if so, how they prevent them from returning to their previous quality of life. Often, victims’ personal testimonies are powerful evidence in asserting their need for non-economic damages.

Victims of Personal Injuries in Frederick, MD Can Call Our Lawyers for Support

Call Rice, Murtha & Psoras at (410) 694-7291 for help with your case from our personal injury lawyers.