If your child has been injured due to another’s negligence, read these 7 child injury tips for you. Then, give our Buffalo attorneys a call.
1) Child Injury Case
A lot of people that come in to see us, friends, neighbors, clients, they want to know what is a child injury case? This simply is a situation where your child has been injured through the fault or negligence of somebody else. It’s very similar to a negligence case where an adult has been injured, but simply here, we’re dealing with somebody who is, by law, underage and is entitled to certain protections. While there are certain variances in terms of how the law applies to your child, the same overall general principles apply in terms of how a case would be processed, the fact you get in to see us and start pursuing things immediately rather than waiting.
2) Injured Child Cases
There’s nothing more upsetting when you see your child injured or you hear about your child being injured if you don’t happen to be there at the time. A lot of people want to know what should they do? What happens when their child is injured?
What I always tell people is the first thing that you want to do is make sure that your child gets the proper medical treatment. Nothing is more important than making sure that your child gets examined and then properly treatment. Then the treatment, obviously, has to be followed through depending on what the injury is.
The very next step after that is to contact us or another experienced personal injury lawyer who is familiar and experienced with dealing with child injury claims because there are a lot of things that have to be done right off the bat: the accident scene has to be investigated, have to accumulate names of witnesses, and interview witnesses. If time goes by, it’s very hard to recreate those types of situations.
After you get the medical treatment, contact us or another experienced firm immediately to make sure that your child’s rights are protected.
3) Winning a Child Injury Case
A lot of people come in and they’re concerned with winning their case. They ask me how can I win my child’s personal injury case? My child’s been injured. They’re hurting. I tell them there are a couple of important ingredients.
Number one is you need to hire us or another very experienced firm that has a lot of experience in personal injury law and specifically who have handled many, many cases involving children. The second thing I tell them is it’s very important to start early because every day that goes by evidence disappears, witnesses don’t remember as well. It’s very important that the lawyer get involved early on to make sure that a proper investigation is done. Sometimes you do the investigation and it pans out that we’re not going to file a claim. If you ever are going to file a claim, you do want to protect your child. You have to make sure that the investigation that is done is done properly so that evidence is preserved so you can protect your child’s rights for down the road.
4) Statute of Limitations for Children
A lot of people are always asking about statute of limitations and timelines. The statute of limitations in New York is set and fixed by law. What New York has is they have what’s called – and it’s a technical term. It’s called tolling provision, which means that until the child turns 18 years of age, the statute of limitations does not begin to run. If your child is 10 years old or 15 years old, there is a lot of time that you have, much more so than if you are an adult. The statute of limitations is the same for adults as it is for children, but children have this tolling provision which protects them and means that they don’t have to file any claim immediately or within the same time period that an adult does.
5) Filing a Lawsuit for a Child Injury
When people come in to see us and they tell us that their child has been injured, there is a little bit of trepidation with the thought that, okay, I have to go to court and have to file a lawsuit. While that sometimes is the case, it’s not always the case. When you’re protecting your child’s rights, you certainly want to file a claim, which means letting the other side know that your child has been injured, letting the other side know what the treatment has been, and letting the other side know how your child is doing.
Very often what happens is sometimes after months or maybe even years, a claim can be settled out of court without the tensions, and the frustrations, and the trepidations of having to file a lawsuit and having to go to court. While some cases do require a formal lawsuit, sometimes it is necessary, very often, it’s not necessary to file a lawsuit. Cases can be negotiated and settled outside of court without a lawsuit.
6) Filing a Child Injury Claim
A lot of times when we’re out in the community with friends and neighbors who have kids like me, they ask what happens if their kid is injured or they’ll tell me a story about their kid being injured. They want to know can they bring a claim. The answer is yes. If your child is injured through someone else’s negligence, they have the same rights to bring a claim as anybody else. The same principles of law apply.
If somebody is injured, whether seriously or a little less seriously, it certainly needs to be investigated, certainly need to come in and see us to find out what your legal rights are and, more importantly, what the legal rights of your child are and to make sure you comply with all the time requirements that are set in New York State law.
7) Do Lawsuits Traumatize Children?
Do Lawsuits Traumatize Children?
A lot of parents, when they come in to see us about their child’s injury case, they are very concerned about their child, and they wonder, and they worry whether or not their child is going to be traumatized of having to go through the courtroom experience or a lawsuit. What I like to assure people is that their child’s experience and their experience with the court system is often very limited. First, a lawsuit is not always necessary, but if there is a lawsuit, the involvement of the child is really minimal. Over a course of two or three years, there may be two exposures where the child has to be involved, and only one of them would be in the courtroom.
One may be where they have to explain to the lawyers what happened, whether it’s a car accident or another type of accident, and in the unlikely event that a case did have to go to trial, they would have to come in, but there are protections for children in the event that they did have to come into the court room, but it’s nothing that is overly concerning. The amount of time that would be involved in this is very, very minimal, and there are certainly ways of preparing children to deal with these experiences, and over 37 years, we’ve handled a lot of these cases and have been very good at putting children and their parents at ease in the event that they would have to come into the courtroom.
If your child has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, our lawyers understand that this is a difficult time for you. Check out these 7 child injury tips for you, then contact one of our Buffalo Child Injury Lawyers to fight for your child’s full recovery.
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