South Carolina Personal Injury Lawyers
Your personal injury case is about more than the accident itself. It is also about what happened after the accident or injury. It’s about how that accident and those injuries have affected you and your life, and about how they may keep on affecting you in the foreseeable future.
As your personal injury attorneys, you can depend not just on our knowledge and understanding of the law, our resources, and our proven ability to secure positive results in personal injury cases. You can depend upon our commitment to telling your story and to securing fair compensation for all the ways you have been affected, and will continue to be affected, in the future.
The attorneys and support staff at the Strom Law Firm, L.L.C. have experience dealing with incidents and can help ensure you receive fair compensation for all your injuries; current and future. Even those cases which do not involve life altering injuries or complex legal questions are often defended aggressively by insurance companies. The insurance companies who most often defend at-fault drivers spend millions of dollars teaching their adjusters how to successfully deny claims.
Protecting You After Your Personal Injury and For the Future
The Strom Law Firm, LLC handles all types of personal injury cases including:
- tractor trailer accidents,
- automobile accidents,
- burn injuries,
- brain injuries,
- motorcycle accidents
- construction type accidents,
- defective products
- defective medical devices
- defective drugs
- medical malpractice claims,
- nursing home neglect and abuse,
- slip and fall,
- wrongful death, as well as
- injuries sustained while working on the job.
As a firm, we focus our personal injury cases on serious injuries including:
- complex personal injury cases resulting in wrongful death or
- catastrophic injuries such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), brain damage,
- spinal cord injuries,
- burn injuries, and
- severely broken bones.
The most important thing that you can do immediately following an accident is focus on getting better. Leave the rest to us.
What type of Compensation Can I Expect in My Personal Injury Case?
Our clients often ask what kind of money they can expect in a personal injury case. While every personal injury case is different, in South Carolina, you can expect compensation for the following:
- medical bills, including future medical care for permanent injuries
- lost wages, and
- pain and suffering/loss of enjoyment of life.
Obtaining Fair Compensation
The law recognizes that the quality of life of the spouse of an injured person also suffers, and it allows recovery for this injury even though the spouse did not suffer physical injury himself or herself. A loss of consortium case is separate from the injured victim’s case.
A personal injury plaintiff may be entitled to an award of the costs for future medical care for permanent injuries. Typically, this must be proven with expert testimony.
Most states allow additional recovery when an injury interferes with a plaintiff’s ability to lead a normal life. With an elderly client, this could mean the ability to play with one’s grandchildren, to walk and exercise as one did prior to an injury, to communicate meaningfully with others, or to engage in pastimes one previously enjoyed.
A patient who was injured as a result of the medical malpractice may be entitled to recover his or her lost wages, past and future, incurred as a result of the malpractice.
Mental Suffering Damages
Mental suffering for which one may recover damages can include the following:
- Fear of the consequences of an injury while awaiting help;
- Fear experienced in the period between realizing an incident likely to cause injury was going to occur and the time of occurrence;
- Fear experienced after an injury about what else could have happened;
- Anxiety about one’s physical health and future well-being;
- Fear of the need for future surgery as a result of one’s injuries;
- Fear of increased vulnerability to future injury;
- Post-traumatic stress disorder.
In a personal injury case, an injured person may be entitled to recover the costs of treatment for injuries as a result of the negligence or intentional conduct of a third party.
Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering is the term used for damages designed to compensate someone for his or her injuries that are physical and emotional in nature. This can be added to the compensation a victim can receive for out of pocket damages like lost wages and medical bills.
Courts generally do not recognize shortened life expectancy as a separate injury, but it may be considered in determining the seriousness of someone’s injury, decreased earning capacity, pain and suffering, and mental suffering from knowing one’s life will be shorter.
Jurors are typically told to determine a plaintiff’s future damages based on standard life expectancy tables. However, due to improvements in medical science and living conditions over the years, your attorney might argue that your life expectancy was/is actually greater than the standard tables would indicate, thereby entitling you to greater damages.
If you have followed good health practices, such as not smoking, exercising, maintaining a good weight, and eating properly, this information might help your attorney in arguing that you are entitled to greater damages due to your longer life expectancy.
Punitive Damages
Depending upon the nature of the case, punitive damages may be awarded. For example, in a case where it is shown that a nursing home engaged in malicious or reckless conduct, punitive damages may be awarded. Because injured nursing home residents are generally older, in poor health, and have a relatively short life expectancy, damage elements that are common in other personal injury cases, such as lost earning capacity, future pain and suffering, and future medical expenses, will not be as significant. Awards against nursing homes are comprised for the most part of punitive damages, and damages for mental anguish, pain and suffering experienced by the injured person, medical expenses, and the loss of affection and companionship by the surviving spouse or children.
Call Today for a Free Consultation
Our attorneys are skilled in dealing with the various obstacles that arise during the course of your case. Although many of the people we assist in these cases are from here in South Carolina, we regularly help clients from throughout the Southeastern United Staes. In certain types of product liability or pharmaceutical cases, we help people who have suffered from across the country. If you or someone close to you has been injured or killed due to an accident, contact the Strom Law Firm, L.L.C. today. We are happy to provide a free consultation with one of our attorneys.
[…] Last September, one woman filed a personal injury lawsuit against Clemson for a hazing ritual that left her with long-term medical needs, including a traumatic brain injury and necessary plastic surgery. On Friday, April 24th, two new defendants were added to the hazing ritual lawsuit. […]