Any injury sustained in an accident can be immensely disruptive to your day-to-day life, especially if it requires multiple rounds of medical treatment and keeps you out of work for days or weeks at a time. However, this can be even more severe if the injury is so debilitating that it permanently alters the course of a person’s life.
If you sustained harm that will cause you lifelong physical, financial, and personal losses, effectively pursuing compensation for those losses may require help from a Blair County personal injury attorney who is experienced with handling cases as serious and sensitive as yours. Once retained, a knowledgeable Blair County catastrophic injury lawyer could guide you from start to finish of your claim, tirelessly demanding compensation not just for the damages you have already experienced, but also those that your injury will cause years into the future.
What makes “catastrophic” injuries unique in terms of civil litigation is not that they involve any unique procedural steps, but rather that the damage they cause is invariably permanent and will therefore continue to affect the plaintiff long after his or her lawsuit or settlement demand is resolved. For that reason, the bulk of recoverable compensation in cases of this nature typically centers around estimated future losses that do not have an objective value at the time the injured party starts his or her claim.
Some of these losses are still economic in nature, even if they cannot always be objectively evaluated in advance. For example, a person whose career path required manual labor might be unable to ever return to his or her old job—or any job at all—because of a catastrophic accident that left him or her paralyzed. In such a case, the value of future wages or salary the victim could have earned but for the injury would be compensable in a civil claim. Likewise, it can be crucial to factor the costs of future medical and rehabilitative care, home modifications, and assistive equipment needed to maximize mobility into a comprehensive claim.
In terms of non-economic losses, catastrophic injuries frequently cause immense personal and psychological harm to victims, including lost consortium with a spouse, physical pain from injuries, and lost overall quality of life. Guidance from a seasoned Blair County attorney could be essential to identifying, evaluating, and effectively seeking compensation for all available losses after a catastrophic accident.
Unfortunately, despite the unique severity of their situation, catastrophically injured claimants are not immune from any of the restrictions established under state law that apply to other personal injury plaintiffs. Accordingly, if a person caught in a devastating accident is found partially to blame for it because he or she was negligent in some way, 42 P.S. §7102 allows a court to reduce the value of whatever damage award he or she receives in proportion to his or her percentage of total fault.
Even worse, if a plaintiff is found 51 percent or more to blame for causing his or her own injuries, that plaintiff would be barred from obtaining any civil compensation. For that reason, as well as numerous others, having help from a skilled lawyer can be absolutely essential to securing a positive case result following a catastrophic injury in Blair County.
Catastrophic injuries are devastating, no matter what specific circumstances are involved or what specific type of physical harm you sustained. Because of that, civil recovery for an injury of this nature must be comprehensive, and it must account for both past and future forms of harm you will or have experienced.
A Blair County catastrophic injury lawyer’s support could be essential if you want a fair chance at getting fair financial compensation. Call Marcus & Mack today to schedule a meeting.
Marcus & Mack
