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Articles Posted in Personal Injury

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If you were injured in an accident in Carlsbad or in another incident that resulted in a serious personal injury, you may be thinking about your options for seeking financial compensation. If you were harmed in a motor vehicle collision, you could be eligible to seek financial compensation by filing an auto insurance claim before you need to move onto thinking about a lawsuit. Or, if you were injured at work, you could be eligible to obtain medical benefits and money to cover lost wages by filing a workers’ compensation claim. For other types of accidents, the first step may be to file a personal injury lawsuit against the at-fault party. 

Whether you have already gone through another claims or benefits process, or you are getting started quickly on your personal injury lawsuit, it is important to understand how comparative fault may affect the outcome of your lawsuit.

What is Comparative Fault? 

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Just how dangerous are cell phones when it comes to causing distracted driving crashes in Valley Center? According to a recent report released by Cambridge Mobile Telematics, cell phones are much more dangerous than many of us assume. Even if drivers keep their phones away most of the time while they are driving, a high percentage of motorists will use their phone at least once or twice while behind the wheel. Some motorists assume it is relatively safe to check email or send a text message while sitting at a stop light or in heavy traffic. Others assume that quickly updating the navigation system on a smartphone will not result in any permanent consequences. 

Yet according to the Cambridge Mobile Telematics, more than 40% of all drivers in the U.S. are distracted by their phones while driving at any given point during daylight hours. Since it is not yet possible to know with certainty whether a collision was caused by a distracted driver, the new report intimates that cell phone-related distractions may cause many more serious and fatal traffic collisions than we would like to believe.

Distracted Driving Crashes can be Avoided, but We Need to do More

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After a serious injury in a Rancho Bernardo accident, it can be difficult to think about anything beyond the physical and financial repercussions of your injury. You are likely scheduling medical appointments for treatment or surgery, and trying to recover physically from your injury. At the same time, you are likely having trouble paying your bills if your injury has prevented you from working. You may be thinking about filing a claim for compensation, but you might be putting it off until your injuries heal enough for you to begin focusing on a complex insurance claim or a personal injury lawsuit. Yet it is critical to keep in mind that you will only have a certain amount of time to file your lawsuit. 

The amount of time you have to file a claim is known as the statute of limitations, and it can vary depending upon the type of injury you have suffered and the identity of the responsible party. We want to provide you with more information about the statute of limitations in personal injury claims in California, and to urge you to seek advice from a Rancho Bernardo personal injury lawyer as soon as you can.

Most Personal Injury Claims Will Need to be Filed Within Two Years

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Personal injuries can vary significantly in terms of severity. In car crashes and other types of accidents in Poway and throughout Southern California, people can suffer harm that ranges from a mild injury to a debilitating or even fatal injury. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word ‘catastrophic’ often means “causing sudden and very great harm or destruction.” In the realm of personal injury law, we often think of catastrophic injuries as those that result in disabilities and those that may be life-threatening. The following are examples of different kinds of catastrophic injuries that often lead to successful personal injury lawsuits. 

Spinal Cord Injuries (SCIs)

Spinal cord injuries frequently result in permanent paralysis. According to the Mayo Clinic, a spinal cord injury is a term that refers to “damage to any part of the spinal cord or nerves at the end of the spinal canal.” Even if a spinal cord injury does not result in paralysis, the Mayo Clinic underscores that these types of injuries frequently cause “permanent changes in strength, sensation, and other body functions below the site of the injury.” In addition, these injuries can require medical support for the rest of the injured person’s life, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars (and often much more).

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When teenagers begin driving in Escondido, the experience can be extremely stressful for parents—both as passengers in the front seat and as nervous figures waiting at home for a teenager to return safely with the car. According to an article in Forbes, parent anxiety might not be helping teenagers at all when it comes to reducing the rate of car accidents. Rather than feeling nervous about having your teen behind the wheel, it is better to take steps to combat your anxieties surrounding your child obtaining a driver’s license and to focus on rational tasks that can provide your teen driver with the safety training they need to stay safe on the road.

Teen Driving is Dangerous

Parents’ anxieties surrounding teen driving are not unfounded. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that, on average, six teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 die every day in a motor vehicle collision, and as many as 300,000 teens require treatment in emergency departments every year for car accident injuries. Yet, as the CDC underscores and the Forbes article emphasizes, teen driving collisions are preventable.

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If you are planning to stay at a hotel in San Marcos or elsewhere in Southern California, you should be able to expect that the hotel will maintain the premises in a reasonably safe manner, and that you will not be exposed to unreasonable risks of harm or injury. However, in the era of COVID-19 and the coronavirus pandemic, the idea of being reasonably safe in a hotel environment has shifted. Many people still want to travel within California, and others want to plan vacations to Southern California from other parts of the country. Ultimately, if you stay at a hotel where you contract COVID-19, can you file a negligence claim against the hotel?

 
This is a complicated question, and it ultimately depends upon a number of different factors. We will provide you with some clarifying information below, but it is important to speak with a hotel negligence attorney in San Marcos to determine whether or not you have a claim.

 
Was the Hotel Negligent in Failing to Prevent the Spread of the Coronavirus?

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Slips and falls can happen in many different ways and for many different reasons in and around Encinitas. Whether you got hurt in a slip and fall accident due to a liquid spill at a restaurant, or your child suffered a concussion in a slip and fall injury on a pool deck at a Southern California hotel, it is important to speak with an experienced Encinitas personal injury lawyer to learn more about your options for filing a claim for financial compensation. Yet you may be concerned that your own fault could prevent you from obtaining compensation after a slip and fall. For example, you might be thinking, “Even though that restaurant or grocery store did not clean up the liquid spill on the floor that caused my injuries, I was distracted because I was walking while texting on my smartphone.” Or, for instance, you might be wondering, “If my child slipped on a slick area of a hotel walkway, is the hotel still liable even if my child was running at the time?”

 
Here is what you need to keep in mind: California uses a “pure comparative fault” rule when it comes to determining damages in a personal injury claim, which is beneficial for plaintiffs who may be partially at fault. However, you should also know that, even if the possibility of your own fault is raised, you may be able to show that you are not responsible for your injuries. The following are steps you should take if you are concerned you are partially at fault for a slip and fall injury in Encinitas or elsewhere in Southern California.

 
Document the Scene Where the Slip and Fall Happened

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Whether you are on the road heading to or from work, or you are driving up the California coast with your family for a weekend vacation, you should know that some types of accidents tend to happen more often in the summer than during other months. Winter weather collisions are not typically an issue in Southern California given that the weather is temperate year-round, but many of the summer and warm-weather accident hazards that exist throughout the country are certainly present in San Diego County and throughout the state in the summer. Travelers Insurance identifies some of the most common causes of car crashes from June through September. The following are tips for avoiding a summer auto accident.

 

  1. High Temperatures can Pose Dangers to Your Vehicle

 
High temperatures can wreak havoc on an automobile if it is not regularly and properly maintained. For example, if tires are underinflated and the weather is particularly hot, you could be at risk of a tire blowout while you are driving. Engines can also be at increased risk of overheating during the summer. Most of the vehicle-related risks that come with hot weather can be avoided if you have your vehicle serviced regularly.

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Learning about the claims process after sustaining an injury in Oceanside can be confusing. How do you file a claim, and do you need to hire a lawyer? For most personal injury lawsuits in Southern California, it is extremely beneficial to work with an experienced injury attorney. Yet finding the best attorney for your case will require you to schedule consultations and to speak with lawyers about your situation. When you do, it is important to ask certain questions to make sure you hire the best personal injury attorney for your Oceanside case. The following are some tips to help you find experienced legal counsel.

 
Ask the Lawyer About Experience in Personal Injury Law

 
You should ask any attorney about his or her experience handling personal injury cases. How many years, for example, has the lawyer been practicing? Has the attorney spent his or her entire career in California, working on cases arising under California law? You want to make sure you have an attorney with experience advocating for injured plaintiffs in personal injury cases.

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When researchers began to develop autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, the thinking was that these vehicles could eliminate the element of human error that contributes to so many car accidents in Southern California. Yet in the time that autonomous vehicles have been tested, they have not actually proven to be all that safe. Indeed, in some cases, self-driving cars have resulted in serious and fatal injuries, especially to pedestrians. According to a recent article in California StreetsBlog, a new study conducted by researchers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) suggests that autonomous vehicles will likely prevent only about one-third of all motor vehicle collisions in California and across the country.

 
Why are autonomous vehicles so ineffective? Is there a possibility that the technology will improve in the coming years such that self-driving cars will do more to reduce the rates of traffic collisions in California?

 
IIHS Says Identifying Hazards is Not Enough to Prevent Collisions

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