Catastrophic Injury Attorneys

If you suffered from an injury in Hartford County that was so severe that it left you permanently unable to work, this could be a catastrophic injury. If your injury is that bad, it will affect every part of your life and set you up for a future that requires support. Support can come in a range of forms, including using the guidance of a Connecticut catastrophic injury lawyer throughout the claims process.

The legal team at Hassett & George can help you figure out who the responsible party is, hold them accountable for their actions, and work with you to win a fair amount of compensation or settlement.

Claims involving catastrophic injuries require a range of legal knowledge, experience, and patience to be successful. Every case is different, and every client deserves compassionate treatment to help obtain a very strong legal outcome. This is a step in the right direction to get on the path to healing.

Topics
Catastrophic Injury Definition
Types of Catastrophic Injuries
Causes of Catastrophic and Serious Injuries
How Are Catastrophic Injury Cases Different From Other Personal Injury Cases?
Proving Liability in a Serious Injury Case
Time Limit To File a Catastrophic Injury Claim in Connecticut
What Type of Compensation Can I Expect?
How Can a Serious Injury Lawyer Help?

What Is a Catastrophic Injury?

A catastrophic injury is an injury that results in paralysis, loss of a limb, quadriplegia, paraplegia, total disability or a brain injury. Accident victims who have injuries that are so severe that they permanently change their lives typically have lost wages, large medical bills, and financial instability.

When an injury causes a lifelong impairment of basic life functions or a disability, the entire family can suffer.

Federal law 42 U.S.C. § 3796b also defines this type of injury as one that permanently prevents a person from being able to earn a living on a short or long-term basis. If you sustain an injury that negatively impacts how you can function, it’s catastrophic.

This could include disrupting your ability to communicate, losing the ability to enjoy your life, losing your ability to talk, having an impaired cognitive or mobile ability, or losing a vital body part.

Common Types of Catastrophic Injuries

Unfortunately, as Connecticut catastrophic injury attorneys we can tell you there are several types of catastrophic and serious injuries that you could suffer, and the most common ones include:

• Amputations: Limited mobility.
• Brain Trauma: Any catastrophic injury involving your head can cause life-long issues, like speech problems, cognitive dysfunction, limited mobility, and more. If you have TBI and are in need of a Hartford County catastrophic injury attorney contact us today.
• Organ Damage: Can be the root cause of many conditions, including life-threatening ones.
• Severe Burns: Limited mobility, infections, or chronic pain.
• Spinal Cord Injuries: Injuries to your spinal cord are often associated with partial or full paralysis, circulatory or respiratory problems, chronic pain, exaggerated spasms or reflexes, and loss of control of your bowels or bladder.

What Are Some of the Causes of Serious Injuries?

Catastrophic injuries often come as a result of car crashes, construction site accidents, slip and falls, motorcycle accidents, medical malpractice, intentional acts of violence, and more. Any victim owes it to themselves to get fast medical attention, especially since injury symptoms may take hours or days to appear. Common causes of catastrophic injuries include:

Auto Accidents

Car, truck, and motorcycle accidents are very common throughout the United States, and Connecticut had 278 fatalities from auto accidents in 2017, with 1,643 serious injuries. Common causes of auto accidents include inattention, distracted driving, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and not obeying the rules of the road.

Truck Accidents

Due to the weight and size of semi-trucks, the amount of catastrophic injuries caused by tractor trailer and 18 wheeler accidents are enormous. If you have been injured in a trucking accident and are in need of the top local Connecticut serious injury lawyer contact us today.

Bicycle Accidents

Bicycle accidents happen for a range of reasons, but the most common include distracted or impaired drivers, speeding motorists, failure to see the bicyclist, environmental hazards, and the cyclist violating traffic laws.

NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis found that there were 846 pedalcyclist fatalities in 2019, and this accounted for 2.3% of all traffic fatalities for the year.

Boating Accidents

With over 300 miles of stunning coastline, Connecticut has its fair share of boating accidents each year, and some result in catastrophic injuries. The biggest causes of boating accidents our Connecticut personal injury lawyers find are operator inexperience, negligence, inattention, reckless behaviors, boating under the influence, or machinery failures.

Construction Site Falls

Construction workers are at a much higher risk of hazards than other industries, and falls can happen off of scaffolding, ladders, cranes, and roofs. Some severe injuries may qualify for workers’ compensation, but the injured employee may have grounds to file a personal injury suit.

Defective Products

Products can be defective based on design or manufacturing errors, or the product can lack proper instructions or warning labels. This can result in a serious injury, depending on the defect and product in question.

A serious injury attorney can help you understand how a defective product contributed to your injuries, and they can collect evidence to prove that the product was defective to help build a case.

Intentional Acts of Violence

When someone engages in intentional acts of violence, the victims can suffer from catastrophic injuries. The state of mind of the responsible party will determine whether or not it was an intentional act of violence. For example, if someone is driving and fails to see a pedestrian and strikes them, the driver may be guilty of negligence.

If the driver saw a pedestrian and accelerated to hit the pedestrian because they thought the pedestrian was too slow, this could be an intentional act of violence.

Medical Malpractice

Patients trust medical professionals to take care of them, but mistakes can happen. When the actions of the health care provider don’t meet the current standards of care, patients can suffer harm. It could be severe enough for a medical malpractice lawsuit against the offending party.

Examples of medical malpractice include failure to diagnose, birth injuries, errors with medication, surgical errors, and misdiagnosis.

Pedestrian Accidents

No matter if the catastrophic accident was a pedestrian versus a vehicle or if it was a pedestrian versus something else, the pedestrian usually loses. From the period of 2010 to 2015, our catastrophic injury law firm noted that pedestrian fatalities were below 50 per year.

Every year since, this number has climbed past 40, and 2016 and 2021 saw it climb to 65. Distracted and impaired driving plays a large role in these accidents, as do environmental hazards and negligence on the pedestrian’s part.

Property Accidents

Property accidents usually involve personal injury claims. Most of these types of claims focus heavily on whether or not the property owner’s negligent actions caused injuries to the plaintiff. The property owner has a duty to routinely check for and make a reasonable effort to address any safety hazards on their property.

At the very least, they are responsible for warning any visitors about said hazards. If they don’t and you get injured, you could have the basis for a claim.

How Are Catastrophic Injury Cases Different From Other Personal Injury Cases?

If you have a personal injury case that is so serious that it involves a catastrophic injury lawyer, the case usually gets much more complex. These cases get a lot more complicated due to the following:

Greater Losses Most catastrophic injuries result in much greater losses for the victim than a personal injury case. Catastrophic injuries usually require the victim to undergo expensive and extensive medical treatment and rehabilitation. The injuries can also mean that the victim doesn’t work for an extended period, or it can take away their ability to work at all.

Harder to Determine Compensation Generally speaking, it can be much more difficult to determine adequate compensation for a catastrophic injury over a personal injury. In many instances, a victim of a catastrophic injury could still be recovering and getting treatment for their injuries as they go through the litigation process.

A victim is usually expected to have future losses and expenses, and a serious injury attorney will have to put together expert testimony and evidence to estimate any future losses to help ensure adequate compensation. Once the claim gets resolved, the victim isn’t allowed to go back and try to get more compensation for their losses.

Requires More Complex Evidence Proving the catastrophic injury’s nature and cause usually involves finding and analyzing a lot more evidence than you would necessarily need in a personal injury case.

Catastrophic injury cases usually require that medical experts give opinion testimony as to what type of life the victim can expect after they reach the maximum improvement level for their injuries and what caused the injury.

Proving Liability in a Catastrophic or Serious Injury Case

In most instances, lawsuits involving catastrophic injuries rely on the presence of negligence. Negligence is an entity or person’s failure to adhere to a set duty of care, which results in the victim’s injury. To prove this lawsuit, your serious injury attorney will need to gather enough evidence to prove:

• Duty: You were owed a duty of care by the at-fault entity or person. This duty depends on how your accident happened. For example, if your catastrophic injury was the result of a car accident, the driver had a duty to drive safely and follow local traffic laws.
• Breach of Duty: The party that was at fault breached their duty of care through a failure to act or through a negligent act. For example, any driver who decides to get behind the wheel while under the influence of drugs or alcohol breaks laws, and this breaches their duty of care.
• Causation: The breach of duty from the at-fault party resulted in catastrophic injuries. Evidence like witness testimony, surveillance footage, and police reports can help prove this. You’ll need to prove that your catastrophic injuries wouldn’t have happened if the at-fault party didn’t breach their duty of care.
• Damages: In most instances, you suffered damages due to your catastrophic injury, and this allows you to collect in your lawsuit. The damages can include any past or future medical expenses, loss of future benefits and earnings, lost wages, pain and suffering, or property damage.

Also, employers can have legal responsibility for catastrophic injuries if a negligent employee causes these injuries while they’re on the clock. If the accident happens on dangerous properties, including those with defective construction or inadequate lighting, the property owners could be liable in the lawsuit due to property neglect.

How Long Do You Have to File a Catastrophic Injury Claim in Connecticut?

The answer is very complicated because how long you have to file a claim depends on the type of case you have and whether or not there are any special circumstances that can impact the time period. Generally speaking, there is usually a two-year statute of limitations for cases involving negligence in Connecticut. If the injury was a result of a defective product or product liability, the standard period is three years.

There are exceptions to the time periods that require guidance from a catastrophic injury law firm early on. For instance, you may have a two-year statute of limitations on a medical negligence case in the state, but if the lawsuit involves a medical professional or medical facility that is employed or owned and operated by the state, the period shortens to one year to file certain notifications.

In the same vein, you might have two years to bring your lawsuit to court, but there are usually earlier written notification requirements you have to follow. A technical claim example would be a case involving a defective street or highway that a municipality or government entity maintains and owns. There are also some exceptions to consider if the lawsuit involves an establishment serving liquor or alcohol.

An experienced Hartford County, Connecticut catastrophic injury attorney in Simsbury or Glastonbury can advise you on whether or not this exists in your case.

I’ve Been Seriously Injured. What Type of Compensation Can I Expect?

Victims of catastrophic injuries can receive economic damages and noneconomic damages for the injuries. Economic damages will help compensate you for measurable losses, and they include:

Earning Capacity Loss: When a catastrophic injury lowers your ability to earn the same wages you earned before the accident, earning capacity loss will help cover these damages.

Income Loss: Income loss encompasses any income you lost as a result of missed work due to your injury.

Medical Expenses: These expenses include the bills you paid as a result of your injuries. It includes future medical expenses like physical therapy, ambulance fees, emergency or hospital fees, surgeries, rehabilitation, and long-term care.

Property Damage: If the accident resulted in damage to your clothing, vehicle, or personal belongings, you could receive compensation for the repair or replacement costs.

You may also be entitled to noneconomic damages, but you should be aware that they are usually more challenging to prove. However, they are every bit as real as economic damages, and they include:

Pain or Suffering: You may be entitled to financial compensation for the mental and physical suffering you experienced because of your accident, as well as counseling services.

Mental Anguish: These damages are for your emotional distress after the accident, including loss of sleep, depression, and anxiety.
Employment Loss – If you lost the ability to enjoy things you did, you could potentially recover these damages.

How Can a Serious Injury Lawyer Help?

If you’ve sustained catastrophic injuries in an accident in Connecticut, getting compensation can be vital to help restore your financial security. Let Hassett & George, P.C. help. Our experienced catastrophic injury attorneys have the skills necessary to help build a strong claim for you.

Residents of Glastonbury, Simsbury and Hartford, CT, have trusted our dedicated team for years to help secure the best outcomes possible in their injury cases.

Hartford County Catastrophic Injury Law Firm

Some of the locations our Hartford County catastrophic injury law firm serves include: Hartford, Simsbury, Glastonbury, New Britain, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Danbury, Norwalk, Manchester, Windsor, Farmington, Windsor Locks, Wethersfield, Rocky Hill, Avon, Bloomfield, Bristol, Enfield, Newington, South Windsor, Southington, Plainville and more.

To get started on your case and help you secure the compensation you deserve, call us at 860-530-6820 or fill out our secure form and our team will get back to you.