The Village of Pelham in Westchester County, NY may not have much by way of huge highways, industrial parks, or dangerous terrain. Instead, it mostly consists of suburban streets and homes – but unfortunately, this is where most accidents actually take place.
Whether you were injured on a neighbor’s property because they did not shovel their sidewalk or you were hurt in a car crash on the way home from work, you could be left with serious injuries that our attorneys can help you get compensation for. After an accident, working with a lawyer can help you file your case in the best way to get maximum compensation and help you to understand what damages you can claim in your case.
For a free review of your potential injury case, call the personal injury lawyers at The Martello Law Firm today at (914) 685-6950.
Car Accident Lawyers in The Village of Pelham
When you get hurt in a car accident, you may be entitled to a lawsuit, but there are requirements to meet first. In New York, we use a no-fault system for insurance. This means that regardless of who caused the crash, you get coverage from your own insurance for medical bills and lost wages, paying a deductible when you seek coverage. However, if you have pain and suffering and other damages above and beyond what your insurance covers, you can claim them against the at-fault driver if your injuries are considered “serious.” Serious injuries include death – which a loved one can sue for – lost fetus, permanent injuries, and broken bones. Injuries are also “serious” if you will be disabled by the injury for 90 out of 180 days following the crash.
This means that if your car was crushed by a large SUV on the Hutchinson River Parkway, you may be entitled to some damages through your own insurance at first. Our personal injury lawyers can help you fight for the rest of the damages in a lawsuit if you broke a bone, lost a limb, or suffered a debilitating injury.
Slip and Fall Lawyer in Pelham, Westchester County
One of the most common types of accident cases our lawyers handle is slip and fall cases. These can happen in many different situations, such as falling on a spill in a restaurant or grocery store, an uncleared sidewalk in town, or a particularly icy train platform at the Pelham train station. In these situations, you could be left with scrapes and bruises at best and broken bones, head injuries, and back injuries in the worst cases.
Property owners and operators can be held liable for these kinds of defects and dangers on their property, resulting in damages for the victim. As discussed below, damages can cover medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other damages.
Lawsuits for Premises Liability Accidents in Pelham
Other types of injuries on peoples’ property can also be compensated aside from slip and falls.
Similarly to slip and fall accidents, trip and fall accidents happen often, especially when there are renovations happening on a building. Trip and falls are also common with temporary A/V setups where cables are often set up across walking areas, such as during the Summer Sundown Concerts at Wolfs Lane Park.
Other dangers and defects on someone’s property can fall into the categories of fire hazards, electrocution hazards, drowning hazards, structural defects/weaknesses, and more. For example, if you were injured in a deck collapse, drowned for a minute in their pool, or otherwise got injured because of dangers on their property, you can file a lawsuit against the property owner that allowed the danger to persist.
Defective Product Injury Lawyers in Pelham, NY
If you get injured by using a dangerous or defective product, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. These accidents are common when it comes to using appliances, household tools, power tools, and even machinery you might use at work. Safety gear and PPE used in the workplace can also be defective, resulting in injuries that should have been prevented.
Product defect cases are often based on either a “manufacturing defect” or a “design defect.” With manufacturing defects, the specific product or batch of products you used has some kind of error or problem with its construction or assembly, causing it to be unsafe. This could include missing screws or items that simply came off the line cracked or broken. With design defects, the whole line of that product has problems with safety or structural soundness because of a problem with its design. This could include things like ineffective safety mechanisms or electrical short-prevention that results in injuries or fires that should have been stopped.
Product injury cases also often involve products that inherently have some kind of danger built in, but which neglect to have the proper warnings to keep a user safe from those dangers.
Work Injury Lawyer in Pelham, Westchester County
If you get hurt at work, our attorneys can help you file a claim against various parties who might have caused your injuries. In most workplace accident cases, you cannot sue your employer without some kind of safety rule violation on top of your employer’s negligence. Alternatively, you can typically file a lawsuit against a third-party defendant, such as a driver who crashed into you, a vendor who dropped a delivery on you, a customer who assaulted you, or a safety gear manufacturer that supplied defective PPE.
Wrongful Death Lawyers in Pelham, NY
If your loved one died because of a preventable accident, our lawyers can help you and your family file lawsuits to recover compensation. While no amount of money can replace a loved one, damages can be issued for the family to cover lost income, funeral and burial expenses, and other economic harms the family will face because of the death. You can also get money for the damages your loved one faced before death, such as their pre-death pain and suffering, medical bills, and lost wages. These cases are complex in terms of who can actually file the claim and whether damages are paid to the individual family members or into the deceased’s estate.
Damages for Personal Injury Claims in Pelham, NY
When you have a personal injury claim, you need to show that the defendant’s actions actually caused you injuries. After all, these cases would not be called “personal injury” cases if there were no injuries involved. The specific form of “injury” might vary from case to case, but bodily injury is usually at least one part of it. However, we can also sue for mental and emotional damages, along with economic harms that result from the accident. The following are all common damages that our personal injury lawyers help personal injury victims claim in their lawsuits:
Medical Expenses
If you were injured and were rushed to the hospital in New Rochelle, you could need scans, blood tests, consultations, surgery, and ultimately may even need a multi-day stay in the hospital. More serious injury cases might even involve ongoing medical care for the rest of your life to deal with paralysis, traumatic brain injuries, amputations, and other injuries. In any case, even mild injuries can require quite expensive treatment, and you should not have to pay for any of it if someone else caused your injuries.
One of the core functions of damages in a personal injury case is to set your life back to how it was before the accident – to the best of the court’s ability to do that. That means paying you back for every dollar you spent on medical care, even if you had some of the care covered by your own insurance or your medical insurance – though whether your insurance can recoup those costs from your lawsuit is an issue as well. All out-of-pocket expenses for past, present, and future medical care should be claimed.
Lost Earnings
If you miss any work because of the accident, then you should be entitled to compensation for the wages you missed out on. Whether the injury was related to your job or not, the responsible party took away your income by causing you an injury. In many cases, they may have even taken away your ability to work in the future, leading to more lost income. These lost earnings are all damages related to your injury and can be claimed in your personal injury lawsuit.
These damages can be difficult to calculate going forward. For example, your specific job and your specific injuries will play a big role in whether you can return to work. If you were injured in a car accident and you work at one of the restaurants along Fifth Avenue, then you might be able to take a few days off and go back to your duties while you are still recovering, perhaps with a cast on your leg or crutches or whatever you need. However, if you are a custodian at Pelham Middle School, then you might not be able to get around campus or perform any of your daily tasks until your injuries are fully healed. We can always take into account things like your ability to work part-time while recovering, your expected return-to-work date, and your age when calculating these kinds of damages.
Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering is one of the other major areas of damages, though it is one of the most intangible and difficult-to-understand areas of damages. When you get injured, it will cause you physical pain as well as mental and emotional effects. These damages are often grouped under the category of “general” damages, given that they generally arise in all injury cases, or “non-economic damages,” given that they do not stem from monetary values. Even though these damages are mental, emotional, and physical, we can still put a monetary value on them, based on what amount would set things right.
Unsurprisingly, more serious injuries are generally paid higher pain and suffering damages. We can calculate these damages by assigning a multiplier based on the severity of your injuries, then multiplying that by the rest of your “economic” damages in your case to come up with a starting value for non-economic damages. Alternatively, a method that works better for injuries that are fully healed or have a clear end date is to assign a daily value for the pain and suffering, then multiply it by the number of days you suffered/will suffer for.
Other Compensatory Damages
“Compensatory” damages are those damages that pay you back. While the three we have already discussed are some of the most common, you can also be reimbursed for other economic damages and expenses the accident caused you. This includes things like property damage and vehicle repairs, but it also includes things like the cost of parking at the hospital, the cost of childcare while you are in the hospital, the cost of ordering food when you cannot cook for yourself, and other expenses to replace household services you cannot perform while recovering. You can also claim compensation as a spouse of an injury victim for the spousal intimacy, household services, and other things the spouse cannot provide you with because of the accident, all under the heading of “loss of consortium” damages.
Punitive Damages
In rare cases where the defendant’s actions were more than merely negligent but rise to the level of recklessness, you can potentially sue them for punitive damages as well as these compensatory damages. Punitive damages do not pay you back but rather punish the defendant for what they did to you. Thus, instead of being based on how bad your injuries and harms were, they are based on how bad the defendant’s actions were.
Punitive damages are often issued against companies that cause injuries after already having been reprimanded by a court for a pattern of injuries that they failed to stop. Punitive damages can also be ordered in cases where the defendant’s actions were incredibly dangerous or intentional, such as drunk driving crashes.
Personal Injury Lawyers in the Village of Pelham, Westchester County, NY
If you were hurt in an accident or lost a loved one, contact our personal injury lawyers today at The Martello Law Firm by calling (914) 685-6950
