Even if you are able to walk away after an accident with just a few bumps and bruises to show for it physically, the psychological and financial consequences of your experience could linger for weeks or even months. If your accident led to you sustaining a serious injury, your ensuing losses may be even greater, potentially to the point of fundamentally altering your personal and professional future.
Fortunately, it is possible to hold a negligent individual or entity accountable for the harm they caused you to suffer with help from a knowledgeable Ballenger Creek personal injury attorney. Seeking a skilled attorney’s help could be crucial not just to proving liability by another party and valuating your damages appropriately, but also to avoiding the numerous roadblocks that Maryland state law sets up for accident victims seeking civil recovery.
How Negligence Confers Responsibility for Injuries
In some unique situations, individuals can be held strictly liable for injuries that other people suffer because of something they own or are responsible for. For example, Maryland Code, Courts & Judicial Proceedings §3-1901 establishes a rebuttable presumption that dog owners are responsible for injuries their pet causes regardless of whether they knew that animal had a tendency to act in vicious or aggressive ways.
Most of the time, though, liability for personal injuries revolves around legal negligence—in other words, a reckless or careless act by one party that constituted a breach of a duty they had to act reasonably around another party, and which led directly to an incident that caused physical injury to the latter party. Depending on the circumstances, negligence could take the form of an overtly illegal act like a traffic violation or violent assault, an accidental lapse in concentration or moment of recklessness, or simply a failure to meet the standard of care expected of someone acting in a professional capacity.
Importantly, though, civil plaintiffs in Maryland must prove both that someone else’s negligence proximately caused their losses and that they did not contribute to their injuries through their own negligence in any way. As a Ballenger Creek personal injury attorney could explain further, state courts follow a harsh “pure contributory negligence” system that completely forbids recovery for any plaintiff found partially to blame for their own accident, even if someone else still bears a majority of the overall fault.
Recovering for All Available Damages
The idea behind personal injury litigation is to allow a person hurt by another person’s misconduct to recover financially for each specific loss they sustained solely because of that misconduct. Accordingly, a comprehensive lawsuit or settlement demand may seek restitution for various forms of harm, including but not limited to:
- Past and future expenses for medical care
- Lost personal opportunities and/or enjoyment of life
- Past and future loss of income and/or earning capacity
- Physical pain
- Replacement or repair of damaged personal property
- Lost consortium with a spouse
However, MD Code, C&JP §3-2A-09 sets a cap on recovery through personal injury claims that—as of October 1, 2020—only allows most plaintiffs to recover for $890,000 worth of non-economic damages at most. Working with a dedicated personal injury lawyer in Ballenger Creek could be essential to maximizing recovery in spite of this restriction and others codified in state law or court precedent.
Get in Touch with a Ballenger Creek Personal Injury Attorney Today
Unfortunately, the state of Maryland is uniquely unfriendly to personal injury plaintiffs in many respects, so seeking effective civil recovery after a serious accident can be challenging. This is especially true if you try to proceed with your claim without guidance from a legal professional who has helped others like you pursue their own claims successfully in the past.
A qualified Ballenger Creek personal injury lawyer could be a critically important ally at every stage of the litigation process. Learn more by calling today.
