Any injury that requires some form of professional medical care and that you can trace directly back to someone else’s reckless or careless actions may be the basis for a personal injury lawsuit. However, if you recently suffered a life-altering and irreversible injury due to another person’s negligence, the approach you should take when enforcing your right to civil recovery must be very different from the one you would take for a less severe injury.
Seeking guidance from a personal injury attorney is always a good idea if you want to get the best possible result from a personal injury lawsuit, but claims built around catastrophic injuries are uniquely complex. If you want a good chance at obtaining fair restitution for your disabling or disfiguring injury, you should consider contacting a Santa Clarita catastrophic injury lawyer from Swift Justice with experience in pursuing—and winning—cases like yours in the past.
The basic legal principles for filing a lawsuit over a catastrophic injury are the same as those for filing a lawsuit over an injury that will heal completely with time and proper medical care. In both cases, the burden of proof for the lawsuits falls on the injured plaintiff pursuing it, and that plaintiff must prove through a preponderance of the evidence that another person was directly at fault for causing their injury through a specific negligent or wrongful act in order to compel that other person to pay for their ensuing damages.
However, while any personal injury claim may incorporate losses that occur after the legal process concludes, catastrophic injury claims over trauma such as severe brain damage, spinal cord injuries, loss of internal organ function, and loss of limb typically require an assessment of future losses expected to arise over the plaintiff’s remaining lifetime. This is where support from legal counsel may be particularly vital, since a knowledgeable Santa Clarita catastrophic accident attorney could both identify the losses a specific person is likely to experience and estimate a fair value for them before they occur.
Naming and demanding fair compensation for future damages can be challenging, and state law also imposes filing time limits that must be considered. According to the California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1, the maximum amount of time most people have to file suit over a personal injury of any kind—including one with life-altering consequences—is two years after sustaining or discovering that injury.
There are no exceptions to this rule; however, certain situations may allow the effective filing deadline for a claim to be tolled, or pushed back, to provide more time for a lawsuit to be brought forward. A catastrophic injury lawyer in Santa Clarita could explain what these situations are and whether they apply to a particular claim during a private initial consultation.
No one deserves to suffer a permanent and debilitating injury, and certainly not solely because of another person’s irresponsible actions. If you have been injured in this way, you deserve fair restitution for your injury-related losses to the fullest extent possible under state civil law.
A Santa Clarita catastrophic injury lawyer from Swift Justice could work tirelessly and fight tenaciously to get you the best possible case outcome. Contact us today to speak with an experienced attorney about your injury and potential claim.
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