When you’ve sustained a spinal cord injury after an accident due to someone else’s actions, you deserve to be compensated. Spinal cord injuries are serious and can impact you in all areas of your life. From your employment to your ability to do other necessary activities that are vital to your livelihood, such as grocery shopping and driving, your spinal cord injury can disrupt your day to day to life. Recovery from your spinal cord injury can be challenging. some accident victims may never fully recover from their spinal cord injuries and may be permanently disabled as a result.
To obtain the compensation that you deserve for your spinal cord injury, you need to file a claim or lawsuit against the person who caused your injury. You’ll need to show proof of your spinal cord injury to strengthen your claim and maximize your chances of getting the compensation that you may be entitled to. The following tips can help guide you in making sure you have as strong a claim as possible.
Get Medical Attention
After the accident, it’s crucial that you get medical attention for your spinal cord injury. Spinal cord injuries are serious injuries that often require emergency medical attention. Some spinal cord injuries may even require surgery. Your best chance of recovering from your spinal cord injury is with proper and timely medical treatment.
Additionally, receiving treatment for your injury is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for your claim. When you file your injury claim or lawsuit, you’ll need to show that you sustained the spinal cord injury in the accident. When you are treated by medical professionals for your injury, they will create a record of the injury, the severity of the injury, and everything they did to treat the injury. This record will be part of your claim or lawsuit as proof that you did, in fact, sustain a spinal cord injury.
The record of your spinal cord injury will also help your attorney determine the value of your claim. Your attorney can calculate or estimate the costs associated with the medical treatment you received and may receive in the future so that you can pursue compensation for those costs.
Gather Your Medical Records
Records of your medical history before the accident are equally important for your claim or lawsuit for compensation. When you file your claim or lawsuit, insurance companies and the responsible party (the person or entity responsible for the accident) may try to claim that your spinal cord injury is the result of something that happened before the accident. In other words, they might try to say that you already had a spinal cord injury. This is their attempt to invalidate your claim or lawsuit and avoid paying you any money.
Your medical records can show that you didn’t have the spinal cord injury before the accident and that you didn’t have any medical conditions that could otherwise be attributed to your spinal cord injury until the accident occurred.
Follow Your Treatment Plan
While this may seem to be a given, following the treatment plan that your doctor gives you isn’t just imperative for your health and recovery. Following your treatment plan also supports your claim or lawsuit. When accident victims don’t follow through with their doctors’ appointments, specialized medical visits, and other prescribed treatments, they can compromise their claims or lawsuits. Insurance companies and responsible parties may try to claim that because you didn’t follow your treatment plan, you either could have contributed to an exacerbation of your spinal cord injury or your spinal cord injury wasn’t as severe as you claimed.
Expert Medical Testimony
Sometimes insurance companies and responsible parties will try to minimize accident victims’ injuries. By minimizing your spinal cord injury, they can reduce the amount of compensation you’re entitled to. If they try to reduce the value of your claim by questioning your spinal cord injury, your attorney can request testimony from your doctor or other medical experts. These medical authorities can testify, if needed, to provide support for your spinal cord injury and the severity of it.
Call the Experienced Personal Injury Attorneys at Brach Eichler Injury Lawyers
The Brach Eichler Injury Lawyers New Jersey spinal cord injury attorneys can help you pursue fair compensation for your spinal cord injury. We have years of experience helping people who have suffered spinal cord injuries in accidents that weren’t their fault get compensation for their injuries. Our results-driven team of dedicated attorneys will get right to work fighting for you. You don’t have to pay us any upfront fees and won’t owe us for our services unless and until we get compensation for you.
Call us today at (973) 364-8300 or contact us online for a free initial consultation.
Written by: Brach Eichler Injury Lawyers Last Updated : June 1, 2022