Harlingen Catastrophic Injury Lawyer

No one expects to wake up in a Harlingen Medical Center intensive care unit. Unfortunately, it can happen, and you can encounter circumstances that leave you barely clinging to life. Negligent people may injure you while you are commuting to work, on the job, or simply walking down the street. They can cause horrific truck crashes, workplace accidents, and slip-and-fall incidents. When you are simply trying to get through your day, negligent people could cause catastrophic injuries that change your life.

When you sustain catastrophic injuries, recovery becomes a lifelong process. You cannot work, so you lose your income and benefits. You cannot do household chores, drive a car, or even enjoy a normal dinner with your family. While you learn to deal with unexpected challenges, you put your life on hold.

We Represent Catastrophically Injured People and Their Families

At Kenny Perez Law, we have seen how severe injuries completely disrupted our clients’ lives. As catastrophic injury attorneys, we have recovered damages for our injured clients and their families. We have worked hard to make responsible parties and their insurers pay.

Our attorneys have always understood how immediate action helped move our clients’ cases forward. Each time we have begun working with a new client, we have focused on investigating their accident, evaluating the evidence, and identifying every negligent party involved. We have placed responsible parties on notice and contacted their insurance companies. We let them know where we stood and gave them a chance to cooperate.

We have also focused on our injured clients and their families. They have motivated us to work hard on their behalf and provide the best results possible. While every case is different, call Kenny Perez Law today to see what we can do for you.

Our Law Firm’s Results

At Kenny Perez Law, we have worked for maximum financial recovery while making our clients’ claim process as stress-free as possible. When responsible parties cooperated, we have avoided long, drawn-out legal processes. Whenever possible, we have concluded our clients’ cases through aggressive negotiation. We have also implemented Alternative Dispute Resolution procedures recommended under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, §154.021.

We have understood that litigation remains a possibility, so we have prepared our cases accordingly. When appropriate, we have filed lawsuits for our clients to let a judge and jury decide.

We cannot predict a case’s outcome, but our attorneys have always promised to work hard on our client’s behalf.

We share our case results to demonstrate our commitment.

• Commercial Vehicle Accident, $350,000 Settlement: A commercial driver injured our client when they T-boned our client’s car.
• 18-Wheeler Accident, $1 Million: Our client sustained serious injuries when a tractor-trailer rear-ended their vehicle.
• Commercial Vehicle Accident, $160,000 Settlement: A commercial driver injured our client in a rear-end accident.
• Premises Liability Accident, $75,000 Settlement: Our client sustained injuries when they fell in a national chain store.

Catastrophic Injuries in Harlingen

A catastrophic injury changes your life forever.

The conditions vary but they all tend to have common elements: high medical costs, minimal chance of full recovery, lifelong treatment, and permanent disabilities.

Spinal cord injuries: A spinal cord injury reduces an injured person’s body function at and below the damaged area on the spine. As patients recover, many remain wheelchair-bound. This changes the way they perform daily tasks, interact with family members, do their jobs, and perform self-care.

Most of the 34,734 patients in the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center database sustained their injuries in similar types of accidents.

• Vehicular, 38.2 percent
• Falls, 32.3 percent
• Violence, 14.3 percent
• Sports, 7.8 percent
• Medical/Surgical, 4.1 percent
• Other, 3.3 percent

Traumatic Brain Injury: Severe head or body blows may cause traumatic brain injuries. With proper rest and treatment, many people fully recover from mild TBIs (concussions). With moderate to severe brain injuries, accident victims experience lifelong cognitive, motor, physical, neurological, and other difficulties

The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research tracks recovery statistics for moderate to severe patients.

• Fifty percent experience decline and/or die within five years.
• Fifty-seven percent deal with lifelong disabilities.
• Fifty-five percent remain unemployed.
• Twenty-nine percent use illicit drugs or drink alcohol excessively.
• Thirty-three percent need help with personal care.

Anoxic Brain Injury: When a victim’s injury deprives their brain of oxygen, anoxia often causes serious brain damage and sometimes organ damage. This often occurs when a medical team revives an unconscious drowning person. Brain injuries also occur when a trench collapse cuts off a worker’s oxygen.

Limb, Hand, or Foot Amputations: Amputations usually occur during serious vehicle accidents and in job-related operations. When a person loses a body part, it significantly reduces their normal functioning. Bionic technologies help create advanced prosthetic limbs, hands, and feet. These costly devices change the way the injured person performs everyday tasks.

Severe Burns: A burn becomes catastrophic when it damages deep tissues and bone, or when it covers a large portion of a person’s body. Catastrophic burns sometimes include third, fourth, and fifth-degree damage. Sixth-degree burns cause such significant damage, the affected limbs often require surgical amputation. Victims sustain catastrophic burn injuries during commercial and residential fires, chemical exposure events, and post-accident vehicle fires.

Multiple Fractures/Hip Fractures: Multiple fractures often occur in serious vehicle crashes. Seniors often sustain hip fractures during falls on hard paved surfaces. Broken bones sometimes pierce internal organs, causing internal bleeding and organ damage.

Who Is Legally Responsible for Catastrophic Injuries?

Often, more than one party shares liability for catastrophic damages.

Here are just a few of the potentially responsible parties.

• Vehicle Accidents: Vehicle owners, drivers, businesses, and transport employers share responsibility for vehicle accidents. Injured victims often sustain catastrophic injuries in high-speed crashes and accidents involving large commercial vehicles.
• Premises Injuries: Property owners, managers, security contractors, and pool maintenance contractors share liability for premises defects, dangerous conditions, and unsafe operations. These issues cause playground injuries, slip and fall accidents, pool-related injuries, and security-related incidents.
• Workplace Incidents: Under the Texas Labor Code 417.001, an injured employee has a right to sue a third party, non-employer who causes a workplace injury. The employer owes only worker’s compensation insurance benefits. The injured employee must protect the insurer’s subrogation rights.
• Defective Products: Manufacturers and designers share liability when a product causes catastrophic injuries. Defective products sometimes cause residential and commercial fires. Defective toys and nursery equipment sometimes cause brain injuries. Defectively designed machinery sometimes causes workplace injuries and amputations, and vehicle accidents.

What Damages Can a Catastrophically Injured Person Recover?

When we have negotiated settlements or tried cases for our clients, we often recovered economic, non-economic, and sometimes exemplary damages.

Economic Damages

Economic damages include all costs incurred for treatment and recovery. As catastrophically injured victims often require lifelong care, an expert also projects future costs for settlement purposes.

These damages often include:

• Wage and income losses
• Hospitalization
• Medical treatment
• Medication
• Mobility devices
• Prostheses
• Physical and psychological therapy
• Plastic surgery
• Rehabilitation
• Household assistance
• Medical transportation
• Funeral and burial costs

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages consider the injured person’s emotional and psychological state of mind.

These damages often include:

• Physical pain and suffering
• Emotional pain
• Mental anguish
• Disfigurement and scarring
• Loss of consortium
• Loss of earning capacity
• Physical impairment

Exemplary Damages

A Texas jury has the option of awarding exemplary damages as punishment for a defendant’s fraud, malice, or gross negligence. The plaintiff must produce clear and convincing evidence that proves this element of the case.

How Do Negligent Parties Defend Themselves?

Negligent people, businesses, or other entities often initiate their defense by denying liability for the injuries they cause. They sometimes do this to avoid insurance coverage issues, prevent a negative corporate image, or save money on self-insured claims and high-dollar retention limits.

When an insurer chooses to minimize their losses, they often initiate a multi-faceted strategy.

• Negotiation: When insurers make inadequate settlement offers, injured victims sometimes settle for a low amount or file a lawsuit.
• Discovery: When an injured plaintiff files a lawsuit, insurers sometimes push for an aggressive discovery schedule. Plaintiffs must decide if it is better to financially support their litigation or settle for an insurer’s offer.
• Affirmative defenses: Defense attorneys sometimes plead multiple affirmative defenses. They hope to sway a jury to return a low judgment or a defense verdict.
• Damage defense: Defendants sometimes question a catastrophically injured person’s damage severity. This strategy sometimes convinces a jury to award a lower dollar amount.

At Kenny Perez Law, we have always investigated and prepared our cases as soon as we became involved. We have held our own during negotiation, mediation, and trial. We have always worked to give our clients the best possible results.