As a parent, your worst nightmare is something harmful happening to your child, and no matter how you try to protect them, sometimes accidents and injuries happen. When someone else is at fault for hurting your child, you need to seek restitution for the harm they have caused. At Shelly Leeke Law Firm, your North Charleston child injury lawyer with 10+ years of trial experience will stand ready to help you understand your options.
When you need a North Charleston personal injury lawyer, contact our professional legal team. We will listen compassionately to your story and provide guidance on how to proceed. We will connect with medical, investigatory, and other experts who will help us build a strong case for you.
Potential Value of a Child Injury Claim
When your child is hurt, especially from a young age, the consequences can last for decades, if not their lifetime. If an otherwise healthy child ends up permanently ill or disabled, you must not only plan to care for them during your life but also provide for their care after you pass away. The final total to pay for economic and non-economic damages in a child injury claim can be enormous.
Understanding the potential value of a claim requires the expertise of a North Charleston catastrophic injury lawyer who works with these cases. When you and your family are first recovering from the injury, it can be difficult to imagine the amount of compensation you will need to protect your family’s financial security. There are many kinds of damages you can seek.
Medical Bills
Your child may require emergency room or ICU care immediately after an injury. During a birth injury, your child could need NICU services and specialists to ensure optimal development despite the damage. They could face repeated surgeries to correct ongoing issues or may need extensive physical rehabilitation.
Bills like these can easily add up to millions of dollars over several years, and your lawyer can help you estimate what you will need. You should not be held responsible for these bills. Let your legal advocate help you hold the responsible party accountable.
Psychological Distress
Many children suffer trauma after incidents such as car crashes or animal bites. They may develop anxiety, depression, phobias, or PTSD. Physical scars could also cause them emotional distress and shame, leading to isolation.
Expenses for counseling and therapy should be included in your damage calculation, as well as reimbursement for the pain and suffering your child experiences. These damages can be added to your claim.
Reduced Quality of Life
No matter what the child’s age is, when they are injured, they may suffer a temporary or permanent decrease in their quality of life. Perhaps they can no longer enjoy their hobbies, visit with friends, or spend time with family, and their schoolwork may suffer, leading to additional issues. If they must overcome extensive physical injuries, they may feel overwhelmed and angry at the freedom they have lost.
Decreased Income Potential
If a child is harmed to the point they can no longer pursue their passions, they may face a loss of earning potential. A violin prodigy or talented basketball player might now face a life of unfulfilled employment, which can lead to depression and reduced earnings. They could lose scholarships or other resources that would have helped them realize their dream, and these losses must be reimbursed by those who hurt them.
Punitive Damages
We can also help with punitive damages. In cases where the behavior was specifically damaging, we want to be sure the court considers punitive damages under South Carolina Code §15-32-530. For example, if your child was struck by a drunk driver, the court may agree to award punitive damages in that case. The value here is also often dependent on what past cases like your child’s have led to.
Common Accidents that Cause Child Injury
From before they are born, children can be at risk for extreme injury from accidents or the actions of others. When your child has been hurt in the Lowcountry, you can rely on a child injury attorney in North Charleston with Shelly Leeke Law Firm to uncover who is to blame. Your loved one may have experienced physical injury, emotional trauma, or a combination of both, and we have handled the following types of cases:
- Injuries at birth – Despite advances in medicine, many things can go wrong during delivery. Negligent nurses or doctors can cause lifelong disabilities and harm to a newborn.
- Dog bites and animal attacks – Smaller children often suffer horrific injuries from animals. Even a small dog can severely harm or kill a toddler or infant.
- Pedestrian accidents – Young children can dash in front of moving vehicles too quickly for an adult to rescue them. They lack an understanding of the dangers and are easily injured or killed.
- Car accidents – Crashes involving cars and school buses are the primary causes of death and injury to children.
- Bicycle accidents – A pleasant bike ride in the neighborhood can end in disaster when drivers fail to look out for kids. Bike accidents are second only to car accidents in causing injuries to children each year.
- Water-related accidents – Swimming pools, private ponds, rivers, and oceans all present a risk of injury from watercraft or drowning. Children may also catch infectious diseases, resulting in permanent illness or disability.
While accidents happen without apparent cause by another person or group, a careful investigation can often show that someone’s negligence led to the mishap. Faulty brakes on a car, unclean public water, debris in parking lots, or reckless driving can all bring harm to your child. Uncovering who is responsible can be confusing and expensive unless you engage a reputable North Charleston child injury attorney to handle your case.
Why Child Injuries Occur in North Charleston
It can be impossible to say why your child is suffering from an injury brought on by another person. You may ask numerous times why this happened, and often, there is no way to know the answer. However, we can tell you some of the most common reasons these types of injuries occur, and that may help us to gather more information to help you in pursuing compensation for your losses.
Medical Malpractice
If your child is injured by their healthcare provider, you may require a North Charleston medical malpractice lawyer. A doctor failed, in some way, to provide the expected type and level of care a child needed, and that led to the child’s losses. For example, your child’s doctor may not have diagnosed a health condition properly, and that led to the wrong treatment or medication being provided.
If that doctor should have known from the information available to them what was actually occurring, they could be responsible for the losses. Another concern can happen in a medical setting that is not designed for children. Sometimes, the incident occurs due to poor medical care at the time of birth. You trusted a doctor to provide proper care, and they failed to do that.
Car Accidents
Since children are smaller and less likely to be seen, it is not uncommon for a child to be struck by a car. They could be in their driveway or yard, and the driver does not see them. While there are many stories about children running into the road, others are less obvious, such as a truck driver delivering a package and not paying attention, which could cause harm to a child in their yard.
Other times, vehicle accidents occur because of the way a child is treated within that car. The driver, for example, is intoxicated and puts your child at risk while bringing them home from school on the bus. You trust the neighbor to pick your child up from school, and that child is not buckled in, leading to an accident that causes injury.
Other People’s Homes
It is not uncommon for a child to suffer an injury when visiting a friend’s home. This can happen innocently enough, but there are times when the other household is unsafe, and that creates a risk to the child. If your child visits a friend down the street and is welcomed into the home, the child can have reasonable expectations that they will be safe there.
If they fall down the steps due to a broken railing or tumble out of a trampoline because there is no protection around it, that is a liability risk for the homeowner. A pool is another example of this enhanced risk. A child may wander into another person’s yard and see the pool as a place to play.
In many areas, including North Charleston, pool owners have to take steps to minimize this risk, such as by placing a fence around the pool to protect children from wandering into the area. The same applies to dogs and other animals that pose a safety risk. The property owner is responsible for ensuring that children wandering into the area are safe per the South Carolina Code of Annotated Laws Title 27, Chapter 3.
What to Do After a Child Suffers an Injury
Assume that one of these situations occurred to your child. You have no idea what your next step should be after getting your child the necessary medical care. At this point, you may be concerned with medical bills or even the long-term implications of injuries, and there are several steps we suggest you take now.
Document Everything that Is Occurring
Be sure you keep accurate records of what is occurring, including photos of injuries, timestamps for when the child was in the area, and logs of doctor’s appointments. The more information you have on hand, the better off you will be when there are questions about what occurred. Oftentimes, we encourage our clients to document anything they think of early on so that later if they need to, they can pull up this information and piece together what went wrong.
Turn to a Child Injury Lawyer in North Charleston Now
We meet with clients early on, even if the client is not sure they have a case. That is okay – it is our job to help you find out if someone did this to your child in a negligent fashion and, therefore, should be held accountable for the losses. In every case, this revolves around a free consultation, as there is no cost to you for this type of support, but we can answer questions.
Avoid Speaking to Anyone or Using Social Media to Discuss Your Case
Let your child injury attorney in North Charleston be your guide at this point. That means keeping all information about what is occurring to yourself. Often, insurance companies will try to use what you say and post online or in phone conversations as proof that the child may not be owed the compensation claimed.
We encourage you to avoid blaming anyone, talking to the responsible party, or otherwise engaging in conversation about the case. If anyone has questions for you, refer them to us. It really is that simple to protect your case.
Help Us Gather Evidence in Your Case
Once you have our team working with you, the next step is to gather evidence. Often, in child injury cases, this is more complicated because, even in the best situations, children may not have all of the information about what occurred and why. They are not always able to remember all of the details, but we can do the following:
- Talk to the witnesses involved. Allow us to gather statements from witnesses to prove what occurred and to get a better idea of what risk was present. A key part of our goal is to document all statements with accuracy.
- Provide photos. We will work to find any photos or video evidence of what occurred. This may be done through various sources. We are comprehensive in our search for available data.
- Expert statements. In some situations, the best way to determine what occurred and why, especially in medical cases, is to turn to medical experts.
- Accident recreation. There are some cases where we can use technology to help show what occurred, and in doing so, that can provide an exceptional level of insight into who is at fault.
- Your child. We will try to speak to your child and get more information about what occurred, especially if there is a lack of other data. We also want to be sure your child can communicate properly with anyone else who asks them questions later.
Gathering evidence is not something you should do on your own. We want to be sure to preserve any accuracy and details. Let our decades of experience work for you as this allows us to ensure your child’s case gets the attention it deserves.
Do Not Wait to File a Child Injury Claim
Although the time following an accident involving your child can be stressful and confusing, you should not delay speaking with a child injury lawyer in North Charleston. Whether you are seeking an insurance settlement or wish to pursue a personal injury lawsuit, you must act quickly. South Carolina Code §15-3-530 requires that parents file a lawsuit on the child’s behalf within three years after the date of the injury.
Gathering evidence and building a solid case takes time, and an experienced child injury attorney at our firm can help you do this within the filing window. If you wait too long, you may lose your chance to secure compensation, although there are some instances in which the statute of limitations can be extended. Do not miss the deadline to file, as it can derail your case.
Missing the statute of limitations might prevent you from receiving compensation. Talk to a North Charleston child injury lawyer from Shelly Leeke Law Firm about your case. We offer free consultations.
Hire a Child Injury Attorney in North Charleston Today
At Shelly Leeke Law Firm, we understand the fear and distress you are feeling after your child has been hurt. We work on a contingency fee basis, so you do not pay us until we win your case for you. We want you to rest easy knowing we will work tirelessly to help you get the compensation and justice your child deserves.
We will evaluate your case in a no-risk, no-obligation meeting. We will give you our best advice on how to proceed and begin working as soon as you hire us. Contact a North Charleston child injury attorney from our team today by using our convenient online form.
