Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer in Dallas

Do I Have a Case?

If you are still unsure as to whether you have a case, there are a couple of things that cases like these have in common:

• The injuries are always severe;
• The injuries are almost always permanent;
• Patients almost always require ongoing medical treatment such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, pain medication, home health care;
• Ongoing therapy usually requires durable medical equipment and devices and may also require home modifications such as installing a wheel chair ramp, widening the doors to bedrooms and bathrooms, lowering cabinets, and other accessibility designs;
• The injuries offer affect the person’s ability to work at all or in the same way as before. This determination may require the evaluation of a vocational expert.

What Kind of Compensation Can I Get?

You only get one shot at resolving your case! Whether you accept a settlement or go to trial, its very important that your case be examined by legal, medical, and vocational experts because, once the case is over, you can’t come back and ask for more money.  This is why we roll up our sleeves, deep dive in, meet with all of the treating doctors, get an understanding of what happened, and retain the experts we need to get a true picture of the lifetime economic impact of the injury before settlement or trial. Some common experts in these cases include:

• Life care planners, which include doctors, nurses, and other medically trained experts, who are able to look at the victim’s condition before and after their injury to see what that person may need to care for them for the rest of their life. This can include things like motorized wheelchairs, modified vehicles, modified home accessibility, home health care, physical therapy, occupational therapy, ongoing treatment, medications, and the permanency of the condition over the life expectancy of the victim.
• Vocational experts will analyze the effect of the injury on a person’s ability to work. They will administer testing and analyze history and other data to determine whether the victim is able to work, or if they must be retrained to do a different type of work.
• Economists put dollar values on both the lifetime future medical expenses as well as the loss of wages and loss of wage-earning capacity.  The loss of wage-earning capacity means either you can’t work at all or maybe you could go back to school and retrain for something and we would figure in the cost of that.  But let’s say for example you were working and you were getting paid $30.00 an hour for something that you could no longer do and you could retrain to do something but it would only pay you $10.00 then you’ve suffered a $20.00 per hour loss of wage-earning capacity.

Don’t try to go it alone. At Van Wey, Metzler & Williams, we have handled many cases like yours and we know exactly what to do to fully and accurately evaluate what has happened to you or someone you love. Lawsuits to recover for a spinal cord injury are complex and may vary, not only in the amount of compensation, but also in who you may be seeking compensation from. Amounts received from a manufacturer or a doctor may be different from those possible from an individual or insurance company. However, the types of damages that are usually recoverable in these cases include:

• Medical expenses after the injury;
• Future medical expenses when additional care is required, including home health care, physical therapy, occupational therapy, ongoing treatment, medications, and medical equipment;
• Loss of wages and loss of earning capacity;
• Costs resulting from permanent injury, including long term or lifelong care;
• Pain and suffering, including mental and emotional anguish in some cases;
• Funeral and burial expenses (if any), including any additional grief, mental anguished, and loss of companionship of a deceased loved one.