Westbury Personal Injury Attorney

To determine if you have a case you can pursue or for help from a Westbury personal injury lawyer call Goldstein & Bashner and schedule a free, initial consultation.

Elements of a Personal Injury Claim

When you file a personal injury claim or lawsuit, your Westbury injury attorney will need to prove four elements in order to win:

Duty of care

First, you need to prove that the party you are filing against (the defendant) had a duty of care to conduct himself in such as way so as not to put you (the plaintiff) at unreasonable risk of harm.

Duty of care is a legal duty to act in a sensible manner so as not to injure anyone. This element is typically easy to establish given that most people owe others a general duty of care, e.g., drivers owe all road users a duty of care, just like doctors owe their patients a duty of care and store owners owe their customers a duty of care.

Breach of duty

Secondly, you have to prove that the defendant somehow breached his duty of care, i.e., acted negligently. This might mean driving while intoxicated, failing to administer an appropriate diagnostic medical test, or having wet store floors with no caution signs.

Causation

Next, you need to link the defendant’s actions with your injury, that is, you need to prove that the defendant’s actions were the cause of your harm. If you were harmed but it was the result of your own doing (e.g., speeding down the road or tripping on your own shoelaces in a store) and not the defendant’s, you cannot justify your case.

Damages

Lastly, you need to prove that you sustained actual losses that are legally compensable to secure your case. Physical harm, financial losses, and emotional harms that you can prove all are evidence of your demand for damages.

Types of Injury Claims

Goldstein and Bashner have been helping New Yorkers in Westbury with personal injury cases for over 50 combined years. Our Westbury injury lawyers have handled just about every type of personal injury situation plausible. Below are just a few examples of some of the most common types of cases:

• Auto accidents: Car, commercial truck, motorcycle and moped, railroads, bus and transit, pedestrian, and bicycle accidents
• Premises liability: Accidents on others’ property, such as slip and fall accidents, collapsed structures, dog attacks, acts of violence, fires, and swimming pool accidents
• Injuries involving children and the elderly: Injuries sustained at daycares, long-term care facilities, playgrounds, schools, and at the hands of in-home nurses
• Medical incidents: Delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis, prescription errors, surgical mistakes
• Public accidents: Injuries at concerts and other venues, resulting from defective roads, on sidewalks or other state-maintained grounds
• Industrial accidents: Accidents at work and construction sites

Westbury Statute of Limitations

There is a statute of limitations, or time limit, on when you can file a claim or lawsuit for a personal injury case in New York. N.Y. Civil Practice Law & Rules § 214-c(2) provides that victims have three years to take legal action. So, if you wish to file a lawsuit for your car accident, for instance, you will have three years from the date of the accident to file your paperwork with the Clerk’s office.

Determining when the clock starts ticking is not always cut and dry, though. What if you do not discover the injury right away? This might happen, for example, in a case where a surgeon left cotton swabs in your body and it took some time for infection to set in and for you to realize what happened. The delayed discovery might also occur in a situation where you slowly developed cancer after exposure to harmful chemicals in a building fire.

Fortunately, New York laws account for these types scenarios. The statutes expound: you have three years from “the date of discovery of the injury by the plaintiff or from the date when through the exercise of reasonable diligence such injury should have been discovered by the plaintiff, whichever is earlier.”

Because the time limit might differ for delayed discovery, or for cases involving children or government entities, it is important not to procrastinate when taking legal action. Talk to a Westbury personal injury attorney straightaway.

Recoverable Damages

If the insurance company accepts your claim or the courts grant you a monetary award, you can recover a wide range of damages related to your injuries. In fact, just about every reasonable major and miscellaneous expense, loss of income, and emotional harm you sustained is recoverable. Below are some of the damages that are compensable in a personal injury case:

• Current and future medical expenses
• Lost wages, loss of benefits, loss of promotion, loss of working capacity, loss of fringe benefits
• Rehabilitation, physical therapy, medical aides, assistive devices, home renovations for disabilities, etc.
• The effect of your injuries on your home and social life
• Pain and suffering, mental anguish, and accident-related emotional disorders
• Lost quality of life

The key to maximizing your recovery is having a Westbury accident attorney — like those at Goldstein & Bashner — who knows the intricacies of personal injury laws and has the techniques and wherewithal to demonstrate the full extent of your losses to the insurer/court. The more detailed we are in your list of harms and the more evidence you can produce to support your case, the more likely that your award will fairly compensate you.

Save all of your receipts, bills, proof of lost wages, medical records, and all other items you can use to illustrate your losses, and share the items with us when you come in.

How a Westbury Personal Injury Attorney Can Help

Our Westbury personal injury attorneys at Goldstein & Bashner can assist clients with any type of personal injury case in Westbury and throughout the state of New York. Our long history of successful cases with notable awards demonstrates our aptitudes and our passion and commitment to helping hurting individuals and families.

Also, because we believe you should spend your energies on healing from your crisis, not dealing with legal issues or scrambling to find the means to pay for them, we offer our services on a contingency basis. This means that we only charge you if and when we win your case. In this way, you have zero out-of-pocket expenses, plus the peace of mind knowing that our tenacious legal team is truly advocating for your best interests behind the scenes. Call our office today to get started on your case.