Orange County Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer
The spinal cord is a complicated bundle of nerves that sends signals from the brain to the extremities, and an injury to the spinal cord can cause serious, permanent damage including restricted motion, loss of feeling, and in some cases, partial or even complete paralysis. If you suspect that someone has suffered from a spinal cord injury, you should not make any attempt to move them, as this will likely cause much more damage. Spinal cord injuries happen because of things like car accidents, falls, assaults, and other impacts, but they can also happen from surgical errors and even loss of oxygen.
If you or someone that you love has suffered from a spinal cord injury as a result of someone else’s negligence, malice, or malpractice, contact us immediately to get the help that you need to build a strong legal case. The team at Timothy J. Ryan & Associates are experienced with a variety of personal injuries, and we will be happy to help you through this difficult and stressful time.
Contact us now for an initial consultation, where you can get advice, ask questions, and learn more about our process. This is a great opportunity to understand how we can help you in your situation, and learn about how we have helped past clients with similar injuries. Read more about spinal cord injuries below, and contact us now.
More About Spinal Cord Injuries
The spinal cord is an extremely sensitive bundle of nerves that run through the center of the vertebrae in your spine. The vertebrae work together to give you the degree of mobility that you have in your midsection, but also act as protection for this extremely important cord. If the cord is severed, crushed, or bruised, the nerves lose their ability to send signals from the brain to the parts of the body that they are connected to. This can cause issues like numbness, loss of motor function, and paralysis.
If you suspect that someone has suffered from a spinal cord injury, you should not attempt to move them at all. Call 911 and let them know what happened and that you suspect there is a spinal cord injury so that they can pass this information on to the first responders.
Calculating Damages For Spinal Cord Injuries
Spinal cord injuries are commonly suffered because of impacts to the spine. While they are more common with high impacts, there are many different circumstances where a minor blow can cause serious, permanent damage that will impact the victim’s life forever. No matter how the injury happened, it is important that the victim gets the proper compensation. We understand that financial awards will never compensate for the loss of mobility and freedom that these injuries come with, but there is no reason that a victim must additionally suffer financially.
In order to calculate the amount owed to a victim, we divide the damages into two different sections:
Economic Damages
Economic damages are intended to repay a victim (and their insurance company) for actual losses and expenses that were incurred as a result of the injuries. This includes all medical expenses, such as hospital stays, surgeries, physical therapy, assistive devices, prescriptions, and anything else directly relating to the medical treatment of the spinal injury. In most cases, these damages will be repaid to the victim’s insurance company, who has first priority to awards in personal injury cases.
In addition to medical expenses, these damages will also calculate income-based losses, including short-term disability and long-term impacts on the victim’s earning capacity. In cases involving spinal cord injuries and paralysis, it is very likely that the victim will be unable to return to work, either at all or in a severely limited capacity, and must be compensated for this change in income.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are calculated as a way to compensate the victim for the “intangible” aspects of an injury, including things like the actual pain they must endure, the suffering they will go through, the mental and emotional anguish that their injuries cause, and more. Since there are no dollar values attached to something like depression and sadness, an experienced personal injury attorney in Orange County will instead determine a multiplier—a number that clearly illustrates the severity of these impacts—and apply that to the economic damages in order to determine an amount that the victim deserves.
Contact Us Today
The sooner you call Orange County catastrophic injury attorney Timothy J. Ryan, the sooner you will be able to stop worrying about the legal aspects of this serious and traumatic injury, and focus entirely on recovery. We will do all that we can in order to alleviate the stress of the legal issues that come with the injury so that you can focus entirely on your physical and emotional health.