Catastrophic Injury Accidents

Have You or a Loved One Experienced a Catastrophic Injury Accident?

If you’ve suffered a serious injury from someone else’s negligence in a car accident, while crossing the street, or in a terrible slip and fall it can be traumatic and stressful. Medical treatments, hospital bills, and lost work or wages can really add up, and you’ll need some help to manage it all. Please don’t take on the responsibility of navigating the claims process by yourself. It’s important to have a legal advocate to fight on your behalf. Only an experienced Kansas City personal injury lawyer can maneuver through the complex laws that affect workers’ compensation, social security, and probate law. Understanding these related fields is necessary to negotiate the best possible outcome for your claim. Never accept a settlement offer on your own!

Different Types and Causes of Catastrophic Personal Injuries

Personal Injury claims that have life-altering value have life-altering injuries. Fortunately, catastrophic injuries are rare. A catastrophic injury is one that affects your current and future quality of life. Catastrophic injuries are broad in scope often involving loss of life, amputation, neurological impairment [i.e., nerves, the spine, spinal cord, or brain], and may also include skull or vertebral fractures. These injuries are typically classified as “catastrophic” when they happen suddenly and without warning, leaving the victim with life-changing, long-term consequences. If an injury causes permanent disability or will affect a person’s daily life or how they earn a living, these factors should be considered when valuing a personal injury claim. Injuries that often permanently affect the victim include the following:

Accidents Causing Limb Amputations

Catastrophic injuries involving limb loss are devastating. Even with state-of-the-art prosthetics, life for patients who have suffered from surgical amputation is never the same. In addition to the medical expenses incurred from the initial injury, amputees can expect a lifetime of occupational and physical therapy to follow. Ultimately, the most important objective for handling any personal injury case involving an amputation is to ensure a client can comfortably live their lives after an injury and afford life-long aftercare.

Birth Injuries

Catastrophic injuries sustained by children are the most difficult for me. A car accident can cause premature birth or can complicate a pregnancy. But, when the doctors and nurses you put your ultimate trust in make critical errors during the delivery of your child, you need an experienced Kansas City Personal Injury Attorney.

Broken Bones

Most of us break a bone during the course of our lives. The symptoms of a broken bone are sometimes hard to identify for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, due to associated neurological issues after an accident, a break isn’t as apparent as it otherwise would be. Other times, the break is nondisplaced, as often occurs after a car accident, and the only symptoms take the form of nausea and lightheadedness. Deferred pain is pain that you experience in a location unrelated to the actual nature of the harm. For example, clients who have broken ribs following a car accident often experience soreness in the arm or soft tissue (intercostal muscles) of the chest. Following a car accident, when your blood is full of adrenaline, your ability to diagnose yourself is terrible. I have had clients who have suffered cervical fractures in a car accident tell the ambulance crew that they’re fine because of the adrenaline in their blood. Everyone should take an ambulance to a local ER following a car accident. You really won’t know how badly you’re hurt until the adrenaline wears off.

Traumatic Brain Injury Accidents

Each year, nearly 400,000 serious brain injuries caused by traffic accidents occur in the United States. The exact number is difficult to determine, however, since many with brain injury do not realize it for months or years after an accident. That’s why it’s so important to get a thorough medical check-up after a car accident, slip and fall incident, sports-related concussion, or other accident where you experience head trauma. Concussive injuries do not require a blow to the head. A concussion is an acceleration/deceleration injury not unlike whiplash.

Depending upon the severity of the brain injury, victims can suffer basic cognitive and emotional problems, memory loss, or experience severe and debilitating disabilities that impact their daily lives.

Donovan Dodrill understands the nature of head and brain trauma and the long-term effects it can have. He knows how to gain you maximum compensation for your brain injury in as little time as possible.

Neck, Back, or Spinal Injuries

When your neck or back are injured in a car accident or a slip and fall, or when heavy lifting or repetitive motions at work stress these regions of your body, spinal cord injury is a major risk. Many with spinal cord damage are paralyzed in part or fully, and the damage can either be temporary or in severe cases, permanent. A spinal cord injury can end your career, keep you bed-ridden or confined to a wheelchair, and make it difficult to fight depression and maintain normal familial and social relations.

Plaza Injury Law can help you recover full and fair compensation for a spinal cord injury. You did not bring your injury on yourself, and you should not have to bear the economic burden it involves alone or suffer the pain and distress it causes uncompensated.

Catastrophic Burn Injuries

Often, unsafe work conditions or unsafe storage or disposal of dangerous chemicals and items can result in severe burn injuries. These injuries are usually preventable and occur due to the negligence of individuals or companies. In other cases, defective products lead to painful, permanently scarring burns.

Medical expenses incurred in treating catastrophic burn injuries can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are among some of the most painful treatments a person can experience. And complications of severe burns may not become clear until years later.

At Plaza Injury Law, a Kansas City Personal Injury Law Firm, we understand how difficult it can be to cope with the aftermath of a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-degree burn. Attorney Donovan Dodrill has extensive experience in assessing the likely total eventual cost of such injuries and in securing full compensation to the victims.

Common Causes of Catastrophic Injury

The causes for a variety of catastrophic injuries are also seemingly limitless. Frequently, car accidents can cause severe and catastrophic injuries. In particular, highway accidents involving semi-trucks and big rigs can be especially devastating. Boating accidents, workplace accidents, and more commonly, car accidents can also cause catastrophic injuries. Listed below are just a few potential causes for a variety of different catastrophic injuries.

Injuries to the spinal cord are one of the most commonly seen types of catastrophic injury. Car accidents, falls from heights, and trampoline accidents can all cause severe and catastrophic injury to the neck and spinal cord. Neck and spinal cord injuries are often debilitating.

Paraplegia or quadriplegia leave victims with partial or total loss of the use of their limbs and torso. Depending upon the severity of a spinal cord injury, lifelong specialized care is often a necessity. In addition to the initial physical injury, victims of severe spinal cord and neck injuries also face a tremendous uphill battle which can leave deep emotional scars. Victims of this type of catastrophic injury often need long-term medical care and physical therapy.

Lifetime Impacts of Different Catastrophic Injuries

Although there are a variety of different types and causes of catastrophic injuries, the common theme is that survivors are left with long-term, lifelong impacts. Whether you’ve lost a limb or suffered from some type of paralysis, your life is going to be different. You might not be able to go back to work. Most likely, you’re facing a lengthy rehabilitation program. Chronic pain, disfigurement and profound emotional impairments are common too.

Personal Injury Lawsuits and Settlements

Catastrophic injuries aren’t easy to overcome. You don’t just get progressively better. In most cases, victims and their families live with the impacts of a catastrophic injury, day in and day out for the rest of their lives. When somebody else’s negligence, carelessness, or willful misconduct contributes to another person’s catastrophic injury, it’s time to speak with an experienced attorney. Plaza Injury Law is ready to help you get your life back.

Hire a Kansas City Personal Injury Lawyer After a Catastrophic Injury Accident

Catastrophic injuries aren’t easy to overcome. You don’t just get progressively better. In most cases, victims and their families live with the impacts of a catastrophic injury, day in and day out for the rest of their lives. When somebody else’s negligence, carelessness or willful misconduct contributes to another person’s catastrophic injury, it’s time to speak with an experienced attorney.

Award-winning personal injury attorney, Donovan Dodrill, can help you to determine exactly how much compensation you need to cover the lifelong expenses and damages involved with your catastrophic injury.

If you are injured in an accident in KCMO, call 816-945-4409 to speak with a top-rated personal injury lawyer in Kansas City, Missouri for a free, confidential case review. You won’t pay a penny until your case is settled, so you have nothing to lose.