Florence Personal Injury Attorney

Personal injuries can create more than just physical pain and challenges in your life. With medical expenses and time away from work, financial stressors are common. Some injuries impact your ability to care for yourself or do the things you once enjoyed. You may suffer from anxiety related to the accident that caused your injury or even be diagnosed with depression. These types of injuries stand to affect nearly every facet of your life.

So, what can you do? Contact the compassionate, experienced, and knowledgeable South Carolina personal injury attorney, Craig Brown, at The Law Office of D. Craig Brown, LLC. He can assist you in pursuing the financial compensation you deserve for your damages.

The Purpose of a Personal Injury Claim

If you are injured due to another person’s negligence, you have the right to financial recovery. Typically, this is done by filing an insurance claim with their insurance company. Your claim is a formal request to receive compensation for your damages, including pain and suffering, lost income and wages, and medical bills.

While filing a claim and receiving a settlement doesn’t undo the injuries you suffered or the fact that the accident occurred, it can be immensely helpful to pay your related expenses and get your life back on track. A personal injury claim is about getting the justice you are entitled to receive. An experienced South Carolina personal injury attorney can help ensure maximum compensation for your claim.

Types of Personal Injuries

Personal injuries come in many shapes and forms, most commonly resulting from motor vehicle accidents. Some accidents cause brain or catastrophic injuries or arise from catastrophic accidents. Slip and fall injuries, workplace injuries (worker’s compensation claims), dog bites, and defective product injuries are also common reasons to hire a South Carolina personal injury attorney. Other types of personal injury claims may involve:

• Truck accidents
• Motorcycle crashes
• Uber/Lyft accidents
• Bicycle accidents
• Pedestrian accidents
• Wrongful death

No matter the specific cause of the injury and the surrounding circumstances, most valid personal injury claims share several characteristics, including:

• Someone owed the injured party a duty of care
• They breached their duty of care
• The breach caused their injuries
• Their injuries resulted in their damages

For example, all motorists owe each other a duty of care to drive safely and obey the rules of the road. If one driver is texting and runs a red light, they have breached their duty of care. If they hit another car because they ran the stop light and caused the driver of that vehicle to break their leg, their breach caused injuries. As a direct result, the driver incurred medical bills, pain and suffering, and other damages.

Proving Your Personal Injury Case

Injured individuals must show that the other party is liable for their injuries. They must also establish that their injuries led to some type of loss, in other words, damages. Typically, there are three general types of liability:

• Intentional wrongs: These are deliberate behaviors that can result in both criminal charges and civil actions. Even with criminal charges pending against the person who caused your injuries, you can still pursue compensation by bringing a civil lawsuit. For example, assault and battery would fall under this category.
• Negligence: Negligence generally refers to carelessness. It is the most common type of liability. In legal terms, negligence is a violation of a duty of reasonable care to another individual. For instance, a store owner receives reports of a leaky roof but doesn’t investigate or take steps to fix the leak. A customer slips on water from the leak, breaks their leg, and sustains a concussion. In that case, the store owner would likely be found negligent and, as such, liable for the customer’s injuries.
• Strict liability: In a few different situations, someone can be responsible for an injury even if they didn’t exhibit negligence or act intentionally to harm another person. In South Carolina, dog owners and sometimes caretakers are strictly liable for any harm their dog causes. This is still true even if they had no inclination or warning that their dog would ever bite or otherwise hurt someone. Defective products and abnormally dangerous activities also fall under the umbrella of strict liability.

Damages Resulting from Personal Injuries

Damages refer to losses from the at-fault party’s negligence or other wrongdoing. It is their damages that a personal injury victim receives compensation for. The types and values of damages are different from one case to the next.

When you meet with Craig Brown, he can explain what damages might apply to your case. The most common damages arising from a personal injury include economic and non-economic losses.

Economic Damages

Economic damages are also known as special damages and are the tangible costs of your injury. They include lost wages, loss of future earning capacity, and medical expenses such as:

• Ambulance services
• Hospital and emergency room physician fees
• Hospital and emergency room charges
• Medical testing like lab work, X-rays, CT scans, MRIs
• Physician and radiologist bills for interpreting test results
• Prescriptions and other medications
• Chiropractic care
• Physical therapy or rehab
• Medical equipment, including crutches or a wheelchair

Special damages are easy to calculate and are objective. There’s no guessing at how much a medical bill is.

Non-Economic Damages

On the other hand, non-economic or general damages are subjective. They have no inherent value, making it difficult to obtain fair compensation for them. Your South Carolina personal injury lawyer can negotiate so that you receive a fair settlement for these types of damages.

General damages include:

• Pain and suffering—the physical and emotional pain you have or will endure
• Loss of enjoyment of life—the loss of present and future enjoyment of everyday activities, plus hobbies, daily exercise, the company of friends, and other recreational opportunities
• Loss of consortium—a loss of ability to give or receive affection or the benefits of a family, usually a marriage relationship

Even though these damages are non-calculable, they are no less critical to your claim. An experienced Florence, South Carolina personal injury attorney understands this and will work tirelessly to prove their existence and value in your claim.

Punitive Damages

Another type of personal injury damages, known as punitive damages, applies to a small number of injury claims. While economic and non-economic damages are used to compensate an injured victim, punitive damages are designed to punish the individual who caused their injuries. However, that person must have acted recklessly, willfully, or wantonly. Cases in which an individual suffers a severe life-changing injury are more often eligible for punitive damages.

Punitive damages punish and warn others of the penalties for acting similarly and help prevent the person from acting the same way in the future. Even though they aren’t commonly awarded, you can discuss the possibility of punitive damages being awarded in your case.

South Carolina’s Personal Injury Statute of Limitations

The statute of limitations provides the legal time limits that someone is entitled to file a claim in South Carolina. The civil courts can refuse to hear your case if you don’t file within the applicable time limit. If that happens, you won’t have any legal recourse for financial recovery. Different deadlines apply depending on the type of case. That is why it is vitally important that you seek legal counsel immediately to ensure that your rights are protected. When you hire a lawyer, they ensure that your lawsuit is filed within the legally required deadline and that your rights are protected.

Were You Injured in an Accident? Contact a South Carolina Personal Injury Attorney Today

If you find yourself in a situation where you sustain injuries, and someone else may be at fault, it’s essential to retain a qualified South Carolina personal injury lawyer to help you navigate the complicated injury law process of recovering damages. Insurance companies are well-versed in numerous tactics to ensure they pay the lowest amount possible for their claims. Without an experienced South Carolina personal injury lawyer on your side, their tactics might be successful.

Consider hiring a lawyer who can use their skills and experience to get you a settlement that corresponds with the injuries you are suffering from. Don’t jeopardize your compensation; call us today to receive your free personal injury case consultation with one of our skilled South Carolina personal injury attorneys.