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An easy, informative how-to story book for lawyers, people with serious injuries and their friends and family, and for people who want to know what it is really like to fight a personal injury battle in court and how to manage after the case is over.
TO MANY IT IS. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE.
Forty-five years of practicing law has taught me that people do not understand personal injury lawsuits.
You may have a personal injury lawsuit when another individual or entity is responsible for your injuries either through fault or negligence.
The most common personal injury lawsuits are motor vehicle and slip and fall accidents.
Personal injury lawsuits are call tort law suits. Torts are civil wrongs that result in injury or damages and are punishable by law to compensate victims for injuries and deter others from committing similar wrongs. Tort law varies from state to state.
To establish a personal injury lawsuit, you must establish liability and damages. Liability refers to the person at fault for your injury. Liability is proven on the basis of negligence, strict liability and intentional wrongdoing.
A party is found to be negligent if they did not take appropriate behavior to prevent your injury.
Strict liability holds a manufacturer or supplier responsible for injuries caused by appropriate use of their product, regardless of fault.
An intentional wrong is committed when an individual knows their actions will cause harm, but proceeds with the action anyway.
Damages include the physical, mental and emotional harm endured from an accident.
Laws governing personal injury lawsuits are complex and the very nature of personal injury claims is complicated. For information about a personal injury lawsuit, you are advised to consult a lawyer. If you have questions about a lawsuit about a serious injury, The Stark Injury Group is available for free consultations. http://www.starkinjurygroup.com
Back and spinal cord injuries can be serious, causing complete or partial paralysis. Paralysis can be caused by trauma that damages or tears the spinal cord. The spinal cord is the “electric wire” that sends messages back and forth from the brain.
Two types of Paralysis
1. Quadriplegia causes a person to have paralysis in both arms and both legs.
2. Paraplegia causes a person to be paralyzed in the lower half of the body.
Where an injury occurs of how severe the injury is determines how much paralysis a person experiences.
I have learned that spinal cord injuries are not always recognized. Oftentimes, an injury causes swelling around the spinal cord which takes days to find. Therefore, I recommend a thorough examination by a doctor. Failure to diagnose a spinal cord injury can result in permanent disability.
Some of the signs of spinal cord injury a person should look for are:
1.Loss of sensation
2.Pain
3.Muscle spasms
4.Difficulty breathing
5.Loss of movement
6.Numbness or Tingling
Back and spinal cord injuries can devastate a person’s life and career. They require rehabilitation and care for the rest of one’s life. If an injury is caused by someone else’s carelessness, a person with back or spinal cord injury may seek compensation. A lawyer with experience in spinal cord injuries can advise you on the best course of action to take to recover for pain and suffering, medical bills, drugs, time missed from work and on-going care. Information about those rights is available at http://www.starkinjurygroup.com
As my readers know, I try to keep up with developments in areas that relate to serious injuries. A few “blogs” ago, I let you know about dangerous toys to avoid. Many of you commented that “you lawyers should do more than warn us.”
Your comments point out the need for a strong civil justice system that protects children and holds negligent manufacturers accountable.
Since 1974, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued more than 850 recalls for toy products, many for hazards like magnets, lead and other dangers hidden in our children’s toys. Between 2004 and 2008, toy-related injuries increased 12 percent, and over the last 10 years, toy-related injuries have increased 54 percent.
The CPSC is woefully under-resourced to cope with the flood of new products entering the U.S. marketplace. Until 2007, the CPSC had only 15 inspectors to monitor all ports in the United States for all products, and only one employee to conduct safety tests on toys.
The result of such corporate negligence and regulatory powerlessness is that dangerous products can be sold on shelves for years before the public has any idea of their hazards. A Public Citizen analysis of consumer recalls found that companies waited an average of 993 days to inform the CPSC of defects, and the agency then waited another 209 days before informing the public.
In the face of such risks, and with so few resources at hand, the nation has come to rely on parents, consumer groups and trial lawyers to serve both as an early warning system and an enforcement mechanism against negligent corporations and their dangerous toys.
As you know, I am always searching for ways to help injured people with spinal cord problems. Canada’s leading advocate for spinal cord injury research is set to sign an agreement with a Jerusalem-based university that would grow an international registry of data on spinal cord injuries and treatments.
Rick Hansen, a celebrated athlete who was paralyzed from the waist-down at age 15, will land on Wednesday in Israel to sign the agreement between the Vancouver-based Rick Hansen Institute and the Institute for Medical Research Israel Canada at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The new relationship promises to expand an international registry to collect and analyze data of spinal cord injuries and clinical treatments.
“This agreement will lead to innovative approaches that improve outcomes for people with spinal cord injuries,” says Rami Kleinmann, National Director, Canadian Friends of Hebrew University (CFHU).
“IMRIC is bringing together the best minds in science, across disciplines and across countries, to create new approaches to meet the great medical challenges of the day.”
The visit is part of one of four international trips Hansen will take to mark the 25th anniversary of his Man In Motion Tour.
The 1985 tour saw Hansen wheel himself more than 40,000 kilometres through 34 countries. It raised $26 million for spinal cord injury research and demonstrated the abilities of people with disabilities.
The trip also aims to recognize international achievements in the field. Hansen will present Rick Hansen Difference Maker Awards to Dr. Aharon Lev Tov from IMRIC and Yuval Wagner, Chairman and Founder of Access Israel.
One of the things I enjoy most about being a lawyer is keeping up with the latest developments. I just discovered a study which is one of the most fascinating I have ever read.
The spinal cord is one of the most central parts of the human body. When one receives trauma to the spine, it can result in detrimental injury including paralysis. In a recent study, primates showed unexpected and extensive recovery after spinal cord injury. This new development may one day lead to novel treatments for patients with spinal cord injuries.
While regeneration subsequent to acute brain and spinal cord injury is limited, milder injuries are often followed by good recovery. Using adult rhesus monkeys, researchers at UC San Diego and VA Medical Center San Diego investigated how this occurs. The team was astonished to see that connections between circuits in the spinal cord re-grew, restoring 60 percent of the connections 24 weeks following a mild spinal cord injury.
“The number of connections in spinal cord circuits drops by 80 percent immediately after the injury,” Ephron Rosenzweig, PhD, assistant project scientist in UCSD Department of Neurosciences was quoted as saying. “But new growth sprouting from spared axons, the long fibers extending from the brain cells, or neurons, which carry signals to other neurons in the central nervous system, restored more than half of the original number of connections.” Rosenzweig added that this was exceptionally unexpected since the phenomenon does not appear in rodents – the standard study model.
Rosenzweig teamed up with Gregoire Courtine of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Furthermore, the senior study director was Mark H. Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor of neurosciences and director of the Center for Neural Repair at UC San Diego, and neurologist at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health System.
Until this study, it was not known that an injured spinal cord could restore such as high proportion of connections on its own. What’s more, the unprompted recovery of the spinal cord was accompanied by extensive recovery of movement on the affected side of the body.
Tuszynski reported that his team is currently examining how the nervous system is able to produce so much natural growth following injury. This knowledge could moreover lead to the progression of drugs or genes that would further transmit high-growth signals to spinal cord damage sites after severe injury to the area.
The work highlights a significant role for primate models in translating rudimentary scientific research into sensible and beneficial treatments for people. The spinal cords of humans – primates as well – are different from rodents, both in overall anatomy and in certain functions.
“With similar injuries, rodents show much less regrowth and recovery of limb function,” concluded Rosenzweig. The team’s challenge is to now determine what precisely is prompting neuronal axons to sprout new connections, leading to recovered movement. That has inspiring clinical relevance, Rosenzweig added, because discoveries resulting from additional research may be applied to patients with severe injury to their central nervous system.
If you have questions about a spinal cord injury, feel free to contact me or a lawyer at Stark & Stark. http://www.starkinjurygroup.com
