Personal injury law is perhaps the most extensive practice area in which lawyers engage. It’s such an extensive area, in fact, that few, if any, law firms provide all of the services required to cover the full spectrum of possible personal injuries. Instead, they usually offer legal services in the personal injury subclassifications in which they have the most experience or in which they have particularly strong interests.
To give you some idea of the extensive nature of the personal injury milieu, the Legal Information Institute defines personal injury as a harm affecting “a person’s body, emotions, or reputation, as contradistinguished from injury to property rights.”
Personal Injury Overall
In other words, at its broadest, personal injury includes not only bodily injuries, but also the following types of injury to your person:
- Invasion of privacy
- Defamation
- Malicious prosecution
- False imprisonment, detention or arrest
In most instances, however, a personal injury law firm represents victims who sustain bodily injuries as the result of an accident or someone’s wrongful acts.
Bodily Injury
Unfortunately, accidents abound in which you can receive a bodily injury. The most common include the following:
- Motor vehicle accidents
- Workplace accidents
- Premises liability accidents, usually slips, trips or falls
- Medical malpractice
- Nursing home neglect or abuse
- Product liability accidents, such as when your tire blows out or your toaster explodes one morning
Most personal injury lawsuits arising from any of the above are based on negligence. Your lawsuit doesn’t claim that the defendant deliberately intended to injure you, but rather that something he or she did or failed to do caused your injury.
Catastrophic Injuries
While no one-size-fits-all definition exists for what qualifies as a catastrophic injury, personal injury attorneys and insurance companies agree that the following types of injuries are indeed catastrophic:
- Traumatic brain injuries that can leave you with a variety of symptoms, some of them disabling
- Spinal cord injuries that can result in your partial or total paralysis
- Injuries that require amputation of an arm, leg, or other body part
- Injuries that leave you with a severe loss of vision or complete blindness
- Injuries that leave you with a severe loss of hearing or complete deafness
- Severe burns that leave lasting scars on your body, especially on your face
In other words, a catastrophic injury is an extremely serious injury from which you never fully recover and must learn how to live with your “new normal.”
Torts
The Legal Research Institute defines a tort as “an act or omission that gives rise to injury or harm to another and amounts to a civil wrong for which courts impose liability.”
Common torts include such deliberate wrongs as the following
- Assault
- Battery
- Intentional infliction of emotional distress
Since these acts are intentional on the part of the person who injured you, your state or municipality can, if it so chooses, prosecute that person criminally. If so, you can still win your personal injury lawsuit even if the criminal prosecution resulted in an acquittal.
Toxic Torts
Toxic torts represent another major personal injury subclass. Defined as “injuries to plaintiffs caused by toxic substances,” these types of cases are often pursued as class actions, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/class_action wherein the people similarly injured by the same product join together as a class in one lawsuit.
Toxic tort class action lawsuits include those against the following types of defendants:
- Companies that allegedly expose their employees to asbestos
- Automobile manufacturers
- Tobacco companies
- Pharmaceutical companies
- Companies that allegedly produce toxic products, such as companies that produce insecticides and talcum powder
Wrongful Death
Most personal injury law firms also represent grieving families who have lost a loved one to wrongful death.
Defined as “a civil cause of action brought by family members and dependents against individuals who knowingly or negligently cause the death of another person,” each state has its own laws regarding who can bring such suits and the time frame in which they must be brought.
In Massachusetts, for example, you can bring a wrongful death action only if you are the executor or administrator of the deceased person’s estate.
In addition, Massachusetts’s statute of limitation allows you only three years after the decedent’s date of death or the date on which you knew or should have known that a wrongful death action was available in which to file your lawsuit.
Workers’ Compensation
When a personal injury law firm lists workplace accidents as one of its practice areas, this undoubtedly includes helping you pursue a workers’ compensation claim if you sustain an on-the-job injury or contract a disease from working in your workplace environment.
Again, each state has its own workers’ compensation laws and rules, but, in general, this program covers such workplace injuries as the following:
- Back injuries
- Broken or fractured bones
- Infectious diseases spread at work
- Carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries
- Cuts, lacerations or punctures
- Sprains, strains, or tears
- Multiple traumatic injuries
Social Security Disability Insurance
Some personal injury law firms will likewise help you file for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits if your injury disables you and prevents you from obtaining or maintaining meaningful gainful employment. This is such a specialized area of practice, however, that only firms devoted to Social Security issues are the ones that usually handle claims of this nature and the oftentimes grueling process of obtaining SSDI benefits.
Jason Stone Injury Lawyers, Your Personal Injury Law Firm of Choice
When you sustain injuries in Massachusetts, Jason Stone Injury Lawyers is ready, willing and able to provide you with the legal services you need and deserve. Personal injury law is the only type of law we practice, and we’re proud to say that we practice it very well indeed, all to the benefit of our clients.
Our history of favorable settlements and jury awards include the following:
- $1 million for a negligent security case
- $775,000 for an unsafe construction site case
- $631,666 for an auto accident
- $510,000 for a slip and fall case
- $305,000 for a bus injury case
- $210,000 for a slip-and-fall case
What makes us different from other law firms is our Stone Cold Guarantee®. First on this list of 10 important things we guarantee you is the fact that we get paid only after you get paid. Second is that we offer you a free consultation at which There’s No Obligation, Just Information®.
At Jason Stone Injury Lawyers, we fully understand that when you sustain a personal injury, it puts you in a very painful and stressful place. Not only are you trying to recover, but you may be fielding the insurance company calls that often begin while you’re still in the hospital. We are fully prepared to transfer that stress from you to our team of deeply experienced lawyers. We do everything in our power to make sure that you have a positive experience with us and are satisfied with the legal services we provide you.
So contact Jason Stone Injury Lawyers today. With convenient offices in Boston, Peabody, Natick and Westwood, there’s sure to be one close to you. In any event, Item 3 of our Stone Cold Guarantee® is to respond to your call within 24 hours or give you a free lunch courtesy of Jason!
Bottom line, our slogan says it all: Injured in Massachusetts? Better Phone Stone.℠
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