What is Considered as a Serious Personal Injury

Have you ever been involved in an accident due to the negligence of another person? In such cases, you are more likely to suffer personal injuries caused by the accident. You may suffer physical pain and need to pay medical bills to treat these injuries. Those injuries would also mean you wouldn’t be able to work for a few days or weeks due to your injuries.

Because of a person’s negligent actions, you would suffer not one but multiple consequences that involve your health, finances, and work. Some people even suffer from permanent disabilities due to such accidents, which have a vast impact on their lifestyles and careers. Besides the fact that you would need to have these injuries treated as soon as possible, it’s also important that you ask for additional compensation from the person at fault. It is your right as the innocent party to file for a severe injury lawsuit.

Before doing so, you should first discuss your case with an attorney from a trusted law firm like fasigbrooks.com to help determine whether your case is considered a serious personal injury or not. Generally speaking, a severe personal injury is when the victim suffers from long-term disability or disfigurement due to the accident. It may either be a permanent condition, or an injury that requires multiple surgeries before recovery. In the worst cases, a person may never fully recover or die as a result of their injuries.

The following items below are considered severe personal injuries that can either affect the person’s life in the long term or permanently. When your case fits in one of the enumerated injuries below, you may consider filing for a serious injury lawsuit.

1. Head or Brain Injury

A brain or head injury is damage caused by a strong impact to the head that results in cognitive dysfunction. For instance, when you’re involved in a car accident, the force of the collision will cause your brain to be thrown against your skull, and your brain tissue is damaged. Your brain’s blood vessels will then burst, resulting in serious bruising and swelling that can then have additional long-term consequences to your cognitive functioning. A head or brain injury may then lead to severe cases such as coma, blood clots in the brain, long-term hospitalization, several surgeries, and even death.

2. Amputation

Another serious personal injury that can occur is when a person loses any body part or limb due to an accident. Evidently, losing a body part will impact the victim for the rest of their life. This consequence not only affects the victim physically but also financially and, potentially, emotionally. The person will not be able to live life in the way they used to, requiring an adjustment period to get appropriate medical attention, mobility devices, prosthetics, or any other assistance needed or desired by the injured party. These are all expensive on their own, let alone as cumulative costs, and in such a case you would certainly be entitled to compensation.

3. Back or Spinal Cord Injuries

Back injuries may sound like a minor injury for the next few days or weeks. However, there are cases when it’s the spinal cord itself that was affected by the accident. Spinal cord injuries are extremely serious as the spinal cord is the central hub of your nervous system. Your nerves are responsible for transmitting messages from the brain to every part of your body. If your nervous system is severely affected, you are at higher risk of permanent paralysis. This means the affected party will need physical support from mobility devices and other people for the rest of their life. Adapting your home to your new needs is a difficult task, but appropriate financial compensation can make it a little easier.

4. Birth Injuries

Giving birth is one of the most anticipated and happiest moments that can happen to a parent—that is, until a medical staff encounters unforeseen medical complications that can threaten both the newborn and the parent’s life. Birth injuries can happen either unintentionally or due to medical malpractice.  

Even if the baby survived the injury, there’ll still be severe impacts on their physical condition that could create medical complications for a lifetime. If you or your newborn baby is a victim of such injury, you may contact a birth injury lawyer immediately to seek compensation.  

5. Internal Injuries

Some personal injuries are not visible to the naked eye, and those are internal injuries. The most common cause of internal injuries is vehicular accidents. For instance, let’s say you’ve recently been involved in a car accident, and you found out that you only got a few bruises and cuts. Even so, you should still seek medical help immediately as there may be hidden internal injuries caused by the accident’s strong impact. These internal injuries are often not felt until a few days or weeks after the accident happened. Some internal injuries include internal bleeding, broken ribs, damaged lungs, and liver damage.

6. Whiplash

Whiplash is the pain that you feel in your neck after you’ve been in an accident. Whiplash occurs when your head is whipped side-to-side or back-and-forth due to a strong impact. Your neck’s soft tissues will be torn or sprained in just a split second.  

You may not detect whiplash right away after the accident. Sometimes, symptoms will surface after a few hours or days since the accident, which is another reason that you should seek medical help immediately so a medical team can thoroughly check your body for any internal injuries or signs of whiplash.  

7. Burn Injuries

Getting burns from an accident can leave in serious pain and, potentially, a lifelong disability. You can get burnt in several ways: it could be caused by either a kitchen mishap, unsafe working conditions, or an incident caused by another person’s negligence. The severity of the burn injury will depend on which body part was affected, your source of the burn, and your age. Burns shouldn’t be underestimated as, if the injury is severe enough, they can lead to death.

8. Wrongful Death

The worst and most severe personal injury of all is death. It may be hard to seek justice when the victim is dead, and there was no witness around to see or tell how the entire incident happened. A devastating death like this can leave the victim’s family feeling desolated as they struggle to recover emotionally and financially in the wake of their loss.

Bottom line

All the listed serious personal injuries above can change the victim’s life permanently. That’s why it’s necessary that you file for a serious personal injury lawsuit and contact your personal injury lawyers if you think someone is liable for your injury.