Suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI) can absolutely devastate a person’s life. When someone’s brain is damaged in an accident, he or she may never be the same again. Traumatic brain injuries can occur when a violent impact to the head causes the brain to strike the skull or when an object such as a shard of glass penetrates the skull and damages the brain. Someone who suffers a TBI may require ongoing, expensive medical treatment and be left unable to work for months or even years. Fortunately, a personal injury lawsuit may be able to help TBI victims recover compensation for their damages.

How Does a Traumatic Brain Injury Occur?

In 2014 alone, nearly 3 million people visited an emergency room for traumatic brain injury treatment. Over 800,000 of these victims were children. Some traumatic brain injuries are relatively minor, while others can cause permanent disability or even death. There are almost countless ways that an individual can suffer a traumatic brain injury. Two of the most common causes of TBI include car accidents and slip and fall accidents. TBIs can also occur during sports, workplace accidents, and gun-related incidents. A child who falls from playground equipment can sustain a TBI if the child’s head strikes a hard object or the ground.

Pursuing Financial Relief After a TBI

If you suffered a traumatic brain injury due to another party’s negligence, recklessness, or intentional wrongdoing, you may be able to pursue compensation for your injuries through an injury lawsuit. Negligence often occurs when a person or entity fails to uphold a duty of care and a serious accident results. For example, a shop owner has a duty to keep the store safe for the patrons shopping there. If the owner ignores an unsafe condition or hazard and that negligence leads to a customer’s injury, that customer may have a valid personal injury claim. Similarly, daycare workers have a duty to ensure the safety of the children in their care. If daycare staff do not properly supervise children and a serious accident results, the daycare company could be held liable.  

You may be shocked to learn that medical mistakes are the third-most leading cause of death in the United States. One Johns Hopkins study estimates that as many as 400,000 people pass away every year due to medical mistakes in the U.S. alone. When you or a loved one has an unexpected medical emergency, you may drive to the emergency room to get the medical care you need. Although the majority of hospital emergency rooms safely provide the life-saving care that patients need without error, emergency room mistakes do happen.

ER Mistakes Can Be Devastating to the Victim

When someone experiences a drastic change in their health, they usually go to the emergency room. Because emergency room doctors and other medical staff are often dealing with high-stakes, time-sensitive medical emergencies, they must use extreme caution and focus when attending to patients. Unfortunately, studies show that as much as 5-10 percent of all emergency room visits involve mistakes. Some of these mistakes will not make a notable difference in the patient’s condition, but others can be the difference between whether the patient lives or dies. Some of the most common emergency room mistakes include:

• Misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis including inappropriate response to signs and symptoms of heart attacks and strokes
• Medication errors including overmedicating, under-medicating, or giving patients the wrong medication or dosage
• Failure to obtain proper patient medical history
• Misuse of a medical device
• Misinterpretation of laboratory test results
• Unhygienic conditions which lead to an infection
• Failure to provide appropriate medical treatment
• Administrative mistakes including confused patient files and mislabeled test results

Pursuing Compensation for Medical Mistakes

Victims of medical malpractice may be left with significant economic and noneconomic damage, including enormous medical bills, a worsened medical condition, and significant pain and suffering. A mistake made in the emergency room could be the difference between recovering from a major health issue and not improving at all. 

Almost every personal injury claim hinges on the concept of negligence. In order for an injured person to collect compensation for damages related to an accident, they will most likely need to provide evidence that shows that the accident was caused by another party’s negligence. 

It can often be hard to know exactly what type of behavior constitutes negligence. Sometimes, experts like doctors, accident reconstructionists, civil engineers, or law enforcement officers will need to weigh in on a personal injury case to help prove negligence. Eyewitnesses to the accident may also provide valuable insight when it comes to showing how negligence contributed to the claimant’s injuries.

Defining Negligence

A person acts negligently if he or she behaves in such a way that a reasonably cautious person would not. This can include negligent acts as well as negligent failure to act. In most personal injury claims, the negligent party owed some type of duty to the injured person. For example, anyone driving on public roadways has a “duty of care” to drive safely and obey traffic laws. Typically, there are four elements which must be demonstrated in order to prove that a party acted negligently:

At grocery stores, shopping centers, and business parks throughout the region, it is not uncommon to see drivers scrambling to find convenient parking spaces. In most parking lots, you can expect the constant movement of cars and pedestrians—the combination of which can easily lead to an injury-causing accident.

Accidents in a parking lot are often caused by drivers not paying attention for various reasons. For example, drivers may distracted by their phones or by small children in the car. Regardless of the cause of distraction or inattentiveness, the outcome is too often an accident involving another car or a pedestrian.

Determining Who Is at Fault for a Parking Lot Accident

The popular belief is that fault in a parking lot crash is equally shared by the drivers involved. However, this is not always the case. A parking lot accident is handled the same way as any other accident on the road would be. This is because parking lots have right-of-way rules that must also be followed and obeyed. A driver who did not yield to another driver or pedestrian with the right of way is likely to be found liable if an accident were to occur.

It is against the law in Illinois, but it is not uncommon for a driver to drive through a steady red-light signal, and many drivers intentionally do so. This typically happens when a driver is in a hurry or the light abruptly turns red on them. Driving through a red light is dangerous as it can cause a car accident resulting in serious injuries or even death.

Illinois Law on Red Lights

Illinois law provides that a driver must come to a complete stop at a red traffic light. A driver must remain at a complete stop until an indication is given to proceed through the intersection, usually by a green light. If the driver’s intention is to turn right at the intersection, a driver facing a steady red-light signal may turn after stopping completely and ensuring that making the turn is safe. A driver can also proceed to turn left after stopping if he or she is on a one-way street and is turning left onto a one-way street.

However, a car facing a steady red arrow signal is not permitted to turn in the direction indicated by the red signal and must stop by a line marking the intersection stop point. If there is no such a stop line, a driver must still come to a complete stop before entering the intersection and remain stopped until the signal turns green.