Accidental injuries happen to victims every day in Maryland. If an injury occurred because someone else failed to use the proper care or skill to keep you safe, you might be entitled to take them to court in a personal injury lawsuit.
To prove the defendant’s liability after filing your case, we will obtain relevant evidence early on, such as witness statements, medical records, and photos from the scene. Our lawyers can help you understand what your case is worth and file your claim in court, fighting to get you the compensation you need for lost wages, medical expenses, and pain and suffering.
Call Rice Law at (410) 694-7291 to schedule a free case evaluation with our personal injury lawyers.
Suing for Injuries from Accidents and Negligence in Waldorf, MD
Anyone injured in Maryland may file a lawsuit against whoever is responsible for causing their injuries.
Negligence
These cases are typically filed as “negligence” cases, which means victims sue for the at-fault party’s failure to use the proper care or skill rather than intentional injuries.
Intentional Injury
However, victims can sue for intentional injuries as well. That requires you to prove the intent to attack or injure you, which is often more challenging.
Building Your Case
Building your case comes in a few stages, all of which our attorneys can help you with. Initially, we will identify who you will file your lawsuit against and then move on to preparing to prove their liability or settle the case fairly out of court.
Whom to Sue
The first step in filing a lawsuit is identifying whom to sue. Finding the responsible party might be easier in some cases than others. For instance, the at-fault driver in a car accident case is typically the other driver. We may also be able to include their employer in the claim if they were driving a commercial truck or a taxicab.
In other cases, it may be more difficult to determine which company made the dangerous product that injured you or who owns the land or building where you suffered a slip and fall.
Proving an Injury Claim
The second part of your case is proving the claim. To prove a negligence claim, you must be able to prove four major elements in court: the at-fault party owed you a duty, the at-fault party breached that duty, the breach caused your injuries, and you suffered damages the court can compensate you for.
In a personal injury case, the duty the defendant owes you typically comes from their relationship with you. For instance, a driver sharing the road with you owes you a duty to drive safely and follow traffic laws, a hotel owner owes its guests access to safe premises, and your doctor owes you reasonably skilled medical care.
Deciding Whether to Settle Your Case
The third part of your case involves deciding whether to handle the case in court and get a jury verdict or settle your claim without a trial.
Initial Offers Are Typically Too Low
In many cases, the defendant will seek to end the case quickly by offering the victim a settlement offer. These initial settlement offers from the defendants are often too low to cover victims’ needs and are offered to try to buy out cases cheaply for the defendant.
What Happens at Trial
If your case proceeds to a jury verdict, the damages you receive will be decided by the jury, not the defendant. While these damages might be higher than a settlement, the damages from a settlement are guaranteed, and a jury verdict in your favor is not.
How a Lawyer Can Help
Strategically calculating damages and settlement offers is often one of the major benefits of having our attorneys represent you in your claim. Sometimes, a defendant will not propose a settlement, and a plaintiff must fight their case in court to get the damages they deserve, which our lawyers can help guide them through.
Calculating Damages in a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Waldorf, MD
The damages you can claim in a personal injury lawsuit are broad and can cover any damages related to the injury. Damages can be split into two types: economic damages and non-economic damages.
Economic Damages
Economic damages cover medical expenses, lost wages, medical transportation, rehabilitation, and other expenses you are forced to pay because of the injury. These damages can typically be calculated by looking at bills and financial records.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages work to compensate victims for their intangible harms. The most common non-economic damages for a personal injury case are damages for “pain and suffering.” Everyone experiences pain differently, and there is no good way to show a jury how much physical pain you suffered or how much that injury is worth.
Proving Damages
Victims can testify about their experiences and how the injury affected their lives physically, financially, and emotionally. This can help convince a jury that the injuries you faced were painful and severe, which can translate to damages for pain and suffering.
Non-economic damages can also include damages for mental anguish, emotional distress, lost enjoyment in activities, suffering brought on by limitations or disabilities, and other intangible effects.
Punitive Damages
In some cases, you may even be entitled to additional “punitive damages” to punish the wrongdoer for egregious conduct. Still, these damages are rare and only possible when cases go to court.
Burden of Proof in Injury Claims
In personal injury lawsuits, victims must prove it is more likely than not that defendants caused their injuries through negligent, reckless, or malicious conduct. Typically, accidental injuries happen because of negligence, but this still makes the other party legally liable for your damages.
Evidence Used
To meet the burden of proof in court, our lawyers may use a combination of evidence such as photos and videos, eyewitness statements, expert witness testimony, victim testimony, and medical records.
Photos and Videos
Victims should take pictures before leaving an accident’s location whenever possible to help preserve the scene. Emergency response personnel might quickly clean up car accident debris, and negligent property owners might promptly address the hazardous condition that caused a visitor to trip and fall.
Photographing the area is the best way to preserve it, and our lawyers may ask for any pictures you took early on in your case. We can combine these pictures with photos taken by law enforcement and eyewitnesses, which might show the accident or its aftermath from a different angle.
Also take photos of injuries.
Eyewitness Statements
Whether or not eyewitness statements are available depends on various factors, such as an accident’s circumstances and location. For example, if you tripped down a poorly lit stairwell in your apartment building, there might be fewer witnesses than if you were hit riding a bike on a busy street.
Ask any eyewitnesses who stop and possibly offer aid for their contact details. Witnesses’ statements carry the most weight immediately after an incident, and we can prioritize collecting this evidence while you are recovering.
Expert Witness Testimony
Expert witnesses can add credence to many types of personal injury claims, and our lawyers can identify which experts may be most beneficial to your case, specifically.
For example…
- Victims may benefit from accident reconstruction experts when injured during car crashes prove a collision’s sequence of events based on the remaining physical evidence and photographs.
- Experts can often assist during defective product cases, particularly when identifying a product’s design flaws or reason for malfunctioning.
- Medical experts are useful in most injury cases, as physicians can often better explain the extent of victims’ injuries and their anticipated impact on their lives, such as their ability to work.
Victim Testimony
While victims’ recollections can help our lawyers determine why an accident occurred, their testimony might largely center on proving their non-economic damages. Victims who testify in court may do so to convince juries of their pain and suffering.
Maryland lets courts compensate injury victims for intangible damages from negligence, such as emotional distress, mental anguish, and reduced quality of life. Juries may be sympathetic after hearing from the victim directly.
Medical Records
Victims’ medical records are so important because they specifically outline victims’ injuries and the treatment they have received since an accident. This confirms the physical harm you have endured, helping our personal injury lawyers prove why you need compensation from a defendant.
Keep copies of all hospital records and bills you receive, but our lawyers can also obtain your records for you.
What if Multiple People Are at Fault?
When assigning fault, courts and insurance companies can assign partial blame to each at-fault party. As long as you show that a person or company met all four elements for liability (duty, breach, causation, and damages), then they can get a portion of the blame.
Each at-fault party pays their share of the total damages, according to their percentage of fault.
What if You Are Partially at Fault?
If you are assigned partial blame, it may actually end your case. Maryland follows a strict “contributory negligence” rule that says that a partially at-fault victim cannot sue.
Other states allow you to reduce your damages by your share of the blame, but Maryland blocks your case. This often means we have to find ways around this rule, such as showing that the defendant was the one who had the last clear chance to avoid the accident or that your actions did not actually contribute to the accident.
Where Should You Get Medical Care?
After an accident, you should go to the hospital for medical care whenever you can. Serious injuries often cannot be treated at an urgent care clinic or doctor’s office, so they might turn you away and tell you to go to a hospital anyway.
Hospitals can also handle third-party billing to an insurance company, something your doctor or an urgent care clinic might not be able to do.
What Does Your Insurance Cover After an Accident?
If you were injured in a car crash, your own insurance might cover some of your medical bills and damages, especially if you have add-on coverage like medical care coverage or collision coverage.
Outside of car accidents, you typically do not have any accident coverage to pay for your damages. For example, in an accident at someone else’s house, their homeowners insurance should pay because the accident happened on their property, but your homeowners insurance would not.
Your health insurance may help pay for medical care, but you may also be able to defer payment until you win your case or slowly pay a payment plan until you get full damages.
Can You Sue for Injuries at Work?
If you were hurt at work, you might be entitled to Workers’ Compensation coverage. This can help cover a portion of your lost wages and pay for medical bills, all without having to prove fault.
However, you may still be able to sue an at-fault party, as long as it is someone other than your employer or coworkers. Through that suit, you can potentially recover pain and suffering, punitive damages, and other costs that Workers’ Compensation does not pay.
How Long Do You Have to Sue?
Most accidental injury cases need to be filed within 3 years of the injury date. Assault and battery claims typically only get 1 year.
Your filing deadline might also be different for wrongful death, which counts from the date of death, not the date of injury. Some cases can also be extended further with special rules.
How Do You Know What Your Case is Worth?
Never trust the insurance companies in evaluating the cost of your case. Their insurance settlement offers are often too low, and they will only go to a fair value after negotiations through your personal injury lawyers.
Work with your lawyers to calculate damages on your own and look for any areas of compensation the insurance company or defendant might not want to cover.
How Quickly Can a Case Settle?
Injury cases can settle within a few weeks or months if the insurance company is willing to pay a fair settlement. If your lawyer reviews your settlement and tells you it seems fair, you can sign the agreement and end the case.
Cases often take longer, with a few months to nearly a year of negotiations and pre-trial preparation before settlement. Cases contested all the way through trial often take over a year.
Who Decides Claims in a Personal Injury Trial?
If your case does go to trial, you can typically request a jury trial. This means that a neutral jury decides the case, based on the evidence and arguments presented in court.
The judge is there to decide the legal questions, not the facts of who was at fault and how much the case is worth. If you elect for a bench trial instead, then there is no jury, and the judge also decides the fact questions and damages.
Can The Defendant Face Criminal Charges Alongside a Civil Lawsuit?
Civil law and criminal law are separate, but work in parallel. Many accidents and injuries you can sue for also constitute crimes, such as DUI crashes and assault. If you report the crime to the police, they will often take that case to its conclusion before your civil case goes forward, allowing us to use the conviction as evidence in your civil case.
Even if the criminal charges fail, a civil case has a lower burden of proof and might still succeed.
When Should You Call a Lawyer?
You should call an attorney for help with your case as soon as you suspect that you have a case. We can investigate your injury and, if we act quickly, locate evidence like security camera footage before it is overwritten or talk to witnesses before they forget what happened.
We can also quickly file insurance claims to get your case started and begin negotiations. This quick action can cut down on delays, which ultimately cuts down on how long you have to wait for full payment.
Call Our Waldorf, MD Injury Attorneys for Help with Your Case Today
Call the personal injury lawyers of Rice Law at (410) 694-7291 and discuss your case for free today.