Harlingen Child Injury Lawyer

As a Harlingen parent, you provide a lifestyle that allows your children to thrive. Sadly, you cannot always protect them from negligent people who cause harm. From the moment your child enters the world, they become vulnerable to other people’s careless actions. Their pain, suffering, and emotional trauma affect the whole family. Your child cannot go to school or participate in family activities. You need to work, but you take time off to make sure your child receives medical treatment and personal care.

In most cases, childhood accidents occur due to preventable events. Whether a person is negligent or simply reckless, when they injure a child, they must take responsibility for the damage they cause.

We Represent Injured Children and Their Families

At Kenny Perez Law, we have helped many Harlingen families recover damages due to someone else’s negligence. We have accepted that negligent parties do not always take responsibility for their actions. Our lawyers have protected our clients’ legal rights by providing compassionate, aggressive representation. We have worked hard to make negligent parties pay.

Our bilingual legal team has investigated our clients’ accidents and analyzed their legal issues. We have placed all responsible parties on notice and followed up to pursue damages on our clients’ behalf. We have presented our clients’ cases, negotiated settlements, and initiated litigation when necessary.

We have always understood that no amount of money could eliminate our young clients’ pain and suffering. We have recovered financial settlements with the sincere hope that it helps families pay for their child’s trauma and ease future medical complications.

Our Law Firm’s Results

At Kenny Perez Law, we have committed our efforts to settling injury claims in ways that best benefited our clients. We have sought to win the maximum financial recovery while causing the least emotional trauma for injured children and their families.

When negligent parties and their insurers cooperated, we resolved injury cases through aggressive negotiation. We have presented cases informally, through Alternative Dispute Resolution forums such as mediation.

Despite our efforts, litigation has always been a potential outcome. Anticipating that possibility, we have prepared our cases from day one. When litigation became the best alternative, we filed lawsuits on our clients’ behalf and presented our clients’ evidence before a judge and jury.

Each claim involves unique injuries and circumstances, so we cannot guarantee a specific outcome.

We share our case results to demonstrate our commitment to hard work and client dedication.

• Commercial Vehicle Accident, $350,000 Settlement: While driving a commercial vehicle, the responsible party T-boned our client, causing injury.
• Commercial Vehicle Accident, $160,000 Settlement: Our client sustained injuries when a negligent commercial driver rear-ended their vehicle.
• 18-Wheeler Accident, $1 Million: Our client sustained serious injuries when a tractor-trailer rig rear-ended their vehicle.
• Premises Liability Accident, $50,000 Settlement: Our client sustained injuries when they slipped and fell in a regional retail store.
• Premises Liability Accident, $75,000 Settlement: Our client sustained injuries during a fall in a national chain store.

Child Injuries In Harlingen

Children become the most vulnerable victims when accidents occur. You teach them safety strategies for walking to school. You use car seats and boosters when you are driving. You teach your child to be careful wherever they go. Sadly, negligent people, properties, and circumstances can injure your child when you least expect it.

Here are just a few of the circumstances that cause childhood injuries.

• Playground Injuries: Children sustain injuries due to defective play equipment, poorly maintained grounds, and deteriorating pavement.
• Defective Products: Some children sustain injuries while using toys and baby equipment with inherent design defects. Children also sustain injuries when faulty appliances cause fires. The Consumer Product Safety Commission lists defective products that caused or contributed to child injuries.
• Vehicle Accidents: Even minor crashes may severely injure children. Car seats and boosters cannot protect small children during serious impacts.
• Pedestrian: Recent Texas Department of Transportation statistics show that 38 child pedestrians sustained fatal injuries in the state. Distracted, intoxicated, and speeding drivers do not take precautions to avoid young people as they cross the street. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration Backover page explains how large truck drivers sometimes strike small children when they back up in parking lots and driveways.
• Bicycle Accidents: Recent Texas DOT statistics show that five children under age 18 died in pedalcycle accidents. The TDOT pedalcycle category includes bicycles and bicycles with electric-assisted power.
• Drownings/Near Drownings: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists drowning as a leading cause of injury and death among children ages one to 14. It is the leading cause of death among children aged one to four. Near drownings occur when an emergency medical technician resuscitates a drowning victim. During the period in which the child is not breathing, oxygen deprivation often causes brain damage and other profound injuries.
• Dog Bites: The National Association of Veterinary Medicine consistently documents children as the most frequent dog bite victims. Children often sustain more severe injuries than adults. The NAVM lists Texas as one of the top 10 states for dog bites nationwide. Texas is number two on the United States Postal Service Dog Attack Ranking list.

Children Are More Vulnerable to Injury

A child’s body is smaller. Their brain, bones, and muscles have not yet fully developed. These physical characteristics render them more vulnerable to severe injuries. When accidents occur, children sustain the same injuries as adults, but the damage is usually more severe. Children cannot always withstand forceful vehicle impacts, dog attacks, and other accidental trauma.

They sometimes cause serious, disabling, or fatal injuries.

• Traumatic brain injury
• Anoxic brain damage
• Fractures
• Spinal cord trauma and paralysis
• Severe sprains and strains
• Dog bite wounds
• Burn injuries
• Wrongful death

Who Is at Fault when a Child Injury Occurs?

When a child sustains an accidental injury, it often involves one or more negligent people or entities. We have investigated each case to discover all of the involved parties.

Potential parties can include:

• Playground, Premises, and Pool Injuries: Property owners, managers, security, and pool maintenance contractors can share liability for premises defects, dangerous conditions, and unsafe operations.
• Defective Products: Manufacturers and designers can share liability for defective products.
• Vehicle, Pedestrian, and Bicycle Accidents: Vehicle operators and owners can share responsibility for vehicle accident-related injuries. When a commercial vehicle causes an accident, the transport company, transit company, or other commercial entities can share responsibility for the driver’s actions.
• Dog Bites: Under Health and Safety Code 822.005 a dog owner is liable for dog bite injuries if the owner knows the dog has had previous attack incidents.

What Damages Can a Family Recover?

When we settle or try an injury claim, we seek Economic and Non-Economic damages. A jury also has the option to award Punitive Damages.

Economic Damages

Economic damages include the total out-of-pocket expenses an injured child’s family incurs. We demand a settlement that covers current and future costs.

These costs can include:

• Parental wage and income losses
• Medical treatment
• Medication
• Mobility devices
• Physical and psychological therapy
• Plastic surgery
• Rehabilitation costs
• Medical transportation expenses
• Funeral and burial expenses

Non-Economic Damages

The non-economic portion of a claim considers a child’s emotional and psychological losses.

These damages often include:

• Physical pain and suffering
• Emotional pain
• Mental anguish
• Disfigurement
• Physical Impairment

Exemplary Damages

When a plaintiff proves that the responsible party’s actions involved fraud, malice, or gross negligence, Texas juries sometimes award exemplary damages.

How Do Negligent Parties Defend Themselves?

When a person, business, or other entity seriously injures a child, they often initiate an immediate defense strategy. This sometimes begins with denying responsibility for an accident or event.

This serves several purposes.

• Avoid or delay a premium increase
• Prevent driver’s license issues
• Avoid a bad corporate reputation
• Prevent a flood of manufacturer defect claims
• Save money on self-insured claims or high-dollar retention limits

Whatever the underlying reason, negligent parties sometimes establish a defense pattern that continues until the claim settles. For both the insurer and the insured, reducing a claim’s settlement potential becomes a mutual goal.

The insurer accomplishes this using several strategies.

• Negotiation: Insurers sometimes offer low settlements. This forces plaintiff’s attorneys to settle for a low amount or file a lawsuit.
• Evidence: Defendants sometimes withhold critical information and evidence. This forces a plaintiff to file suit and spend money to produce the evidence during discovery. They understand that plaintiffs sometimes settle for a lower amount to avoid discovery costs.
• Affirmative Defenses: Some defense attorneys believe they can defend their clients by pleading affirmative defenses.
• Defending on Case Value: Some negligent parties have no viable defense but they defend a case by questioning the plaintiff’s injury severity.

At Kenny Perez Law, we handle creative insurance company defense strategies by using strategies of our own. We also investigate our clients’ accidents and prepare our cases long before negotiation, mediation, or trial. This allows us the opportunity to produce the best possible results.