Introduction
Whether you are involved in an automobile accident, injured by a slip-and-fall accident or the victim of a workplace safety incident, being the victim of personal injury can be a double whammy. When you are injured, you can incur thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars in medical bills and ancillary expenses. At the same time, those personal injury victims are often unable to work, making an already bad situation that much worse.
That is why it is important to protect yourself and your rights if you become the victim of a personal injury. If you are injured through no fault of your own, or victimized due to the negligence of an individual or business owner, it is important to get help without delay. Contacting an experienced personal injury attorney promptly can mean the difference between a fair and equitable settlement and no settlement at all.
Protect Yourself
The first step to protecting yourself and your rights is to know the laws governing personal injury where you live. While there are federal statutes in place, individual states have also enacted laws designed to protect their workers and provide guidelines to their employers. If you live and work in the state of Arizona, you need to understand those personal injury laws and how they apply to you. Here is what you need to know about personal injury in the state of Arizona.
What is a Personal Injury Claim?
First of all, it is important to discuss what a personal injury claim is and how it applies to individuals in the state of Arizona. According to Arizona law, a personal injury claim happens when an individual has been harmed and wishes to receive monetary compensation from the person or business that wronged them and caused the injury.
The personal injury claim may be for negligence, meaning the injured party claims the person or business that caused the injury was careless. Many automobile accident cases fall into this category, including instances where the driver may have been distracted or simply not paying attention behind the wheel.
Negligence can also exist in a slip-and-fall accident. If the owner of a home or business fails to clear away snow and ice, for instance, that could be considered careless, and a personal injury lawsuit might go forward on that basis.
Understanding Malpractice
Professional malpractice is also a form of carelessness, but it goes into its own separate category. Many personal injury claims go forward on the basis of professional malpractice, and that malpractice is not confined to the medical professional.
Other professionals, including lawyers and accountants, can also commit malpractice, and their clients and customers may suffer monetary and other losses as a result. If you feel you have been the victim of professional malpractice, you should contact a personal injury attorney as soon as possible so your claim can go forward.
Products Liability
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Personal injury claims based on product liability typically involve defective products and the injuries that result from their use. From exploding batteries to defective electrical plugs to infant car seats that fail to provide the required protection, these products liability cases run the gamut.
Industrial and Worker’s Compensation
Personal injury claims related to industrial and worker’s compensation involve injuries and deaths sustained at the workplace. These situations can arise from a lack of safety equipment, from inadequate training, from workplace hazards or a combination of all these factors.
These personal injury claim cases are somewhat unique, in that the individual making the worker’s compensation claim does not have to prove that an individual or business owner was at fault, or even that carelessness was involved, in order to prevail in their cases.
Paying for Medical Bills
The payment of medical bills and other expenses is often the deciding factor in the filing of a personal injury claim. Medical bills can be quite overwhelming when a serious injury occurs, and injured parties often do not know where to turn.
That is why personal injury law holds that if someone else causes an accident or injury through carelessness, they can be held responsible for the payment of medical bills resulting from the injury. The law further holds that the individual or business that caused the accident can be held liable for discomfort, pain, lost wages, emotional harm and physical limitations which may result.
Some of these expenses, like medical bills and lost wages, are easy to calculate, while others, like pain and suffering and emotional suffering, are much harder to quantify. That is why having a competent personal injury attorney in your corner is so important. A seasoned professional will be able to quantify these seemingly unquantifiable factors and present a fair and equitable settlement offer to the individual or business that caused the injury.
Issues to Consider
If you are injured through no fault of your own, it is important to protect your rights and take the proper steps right away. In many personal injury cases, the individual or business owner who was careless may not have sufficient insurance, or any insurance at all. For that reason, it is important for the injured party to first submit all their medical bills to their health insurance company. This will protect the injured party while the legal claim goes forward and prevent unnecessary losses and out-of-pocket expenses.
Working with an experienced attorney will be critical at this point. Your attorney can advise you on who should be responsible for paying which bills, as well as what kind of insurance is available and how the claim should proceed.
If you are injured through no fault of your own, it is important to protect your rights. Being the victim of a workplace injury, automobile accident or slip-and-fall can be frightening and disconcerting, but it is important to think rationally and act in your own best interests. That means contacting an experienced personal injury law firm as soon as possible, keeping copies of all your medical bills and other expenses and discussing your claim with a legal professional. The sooner you act in the wake of a personal injury, the easier it will be to protect your rights and create a claim that will compensate you for your medical bills, pain and suffering, lost wages and other serious losses.
Call our Personal Injury team at (480) 467-4392 to discuss your case today.