One of the most common injuries suffered in a Mississippi auto accident is whiplash, which causes serious back and neck pain.  Whiplash often is marginalized by insurance companies as fake or exaggerated injuries.  This inaccurate perception is fueled by comic treatment of whiplash injuries by Hollywood.  The reality is that whiplash injuries are extremely debilitating and can result in severe pain for months.  Many Mississippi whiplash victims suffer permanent pain and disability.

Whiplash injuries typically occur when a vehicle is hit from behind, which causes the head and neck to lurch forward at a fairly high rate of speed before being “whipped” backwards.  The whipping motion results in stretching of the muscles and ligament tissues of the neck.  The speed of the motion may cause the neck to overstretch resulting in microscopic tears to the muscle fibers.

The unfair stereotypes that minimalize whiplash injuries result from a number of factors unique to whiplash injuries.  The first issue is that sometimes the symptoms of whiplash injuries are not immediately apparent.  The most common cause of whiplash injuries is motor vehicle accidents.  Because many car accident victims suffer only minor symptoms immediately following a Mississippi auto accident, they may delay in seeking medical attention for days or even weeks.  This delay may be referenced by the insurance company as evidence that no serious injury was suffered in a collision.

Another issue that contributes to the false impression that whiplash injuries are not serious is the fact that they can be difficult to diagnose.  Even with sophisticated diagnostic tools like x-rays, an MRI or CT scan, it can be difficult to develop clear medical evidence of whiplash.  Whiplash injuries often occur at low rates of speed, which also tends to be used to minimize the significance of whiplash injuries suffered in Mississippi auto accidents.  Insurance adjusters may contact unrepresented collision injury victims and try to extend a low-ball settlement offer based on a lack of significant property damage.  The adjuster may characterize the accident as a “low impact” collision and offer a woefully inadequate settlement.

It is important to understand that there is minimal correlation between the rate of speed during a collision and whiplash injuries to the neck.  When you are in a collision, the vehicle and the head of occupants move at different rates of speed.  In a collision where a vehicle is moving at 5 miles per hour, the head of vehicle occupants will move at 10-12 g of acceleration.  Approximate 1.5 million vehicle occupants involved in low speed rear impact collisions will experience chronic pain.  The experienced Mississippi personal injury attorneys at Barrett Law have been providing effective representation to Mississippi auto accident victims for over 75 years.  We provide diligent legal representation and impassioned advocacy so we invite you to call us today at 662-834-2376 to learn how we can help.

We previously wrote an entry in this blog regarding a television news anchorwoman who was bitten in the face by a dog during an on air attack.  The woman has now been treated and information about her injuries and treatment reveal the serious injuries that may be caused by a dog attack.  The woman received seventy stitches to the face; she is unable to speak because her mouth had to be stitched shut.  The dog attack victim received stiches to her nose, lower lip and upper lip.  Her mouth was stitched shut to allow the skin graft to take hold as well as to let the blood begin circulating in her lips again.

This type of serious dog bite is not nearly as uncommon as many people might think.  The American Humane Association reports that there are approximately 800,000 dog bites per year that require medical treatment.  Children are particularly vulnerable to being the victim of a Mississippi dog bite.  Fifty percent of dog bite victims are children under the age of 12.  Children are not only more likely to be attacked by a dog but also tend to suffer more severe dog attack injuries.  A whopping 82 percent of dog bites that cause trips to the emergency room involve children under the age of 15 while 70 percent of dog bite fatalities involve children under the age of 10.

There are certain breeds of dogs that have a greater propensity to be vicious, and they tend to be involved in more serious dog attacks.  Because of this propensity, many cities in Mississippi have ordinances that limit or restrict ownership of certain breeds of dog.  This legislation called Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) most commonly targets pit bulls in Mississippi but also applies to Rottweilers and some other breeds depending on the city.

One reason children are disproportionately injured in dog attacks is that they lack the experience and knowledge of how to act safely around dogs.  Research has indicated that children who are educated by their parents about how to play with dogs and when to leave dogs alone are less likely to be involved in a dog attack.  It is never advisable to leave a small child unsupervised around someone else’s dog even if the child knows the dog.  Sometimes behavior that does not seem antagonizing to a child may cause a dog to react in unpredictable ways.

If you or someone you love is the victim of a dog attack, the experienced Mississippi dog attack attorneys at Barrett Law represent injury victims with compassion and diligence.  The experienced Mississippi personal injury attorneys at Barrett Law have been providing effective representation to Mississippi personal injury victims for over 75 years.  We provide diligent legal representation and impassioned advocacy so we invite you to call us today at 662-834-2376 to learn how we can help.

Many Mississippi personal injury victims are injured by the negligent or intentional acts of others in Mississippi car crashes, construction accidents, violent crimes and other incidents involving wrongful conduct.  What many people do not understand is the importance of timing requirements in pursuing a personal injury claim.  The law imposes strict deadlines for initiating legal actions.  When these deadlines are not met, it typically means that a claim will be completely barred despite the merits of the case.

An example is probably the best way to understand the critical role of these timing requirements on the viability of a personal injury claim.  A person is shot in the head by an armed assailant during a robbery and sues the assailant for personal injury.  The victim suffers traumatic brain injury and remains in a persistent vegetative state.  This is about as much of a “no brainer” as one can get in terms of liability (i.e. fault), and there is no argument that the intentional misconduct of the assailant was the cause of the shooting victim’s traumatic brain injury.  The shooting victim is a forty year old husband and father of three children who works as a neurosurgeon.  This type of claim typically would appear to be worth millions of dollars.

If a personal injury lawsuit is not initiated within the statute of limitations, however, the claim will virtually always be permanently barred so that the injury victim has no legal right to obtain compensation for his injuries.  Despite the tragic facts of this case, including a family left without the financial support of a bread winner or the loss of parenting and marital companionship, the court cannot make a “hardship” exception.  The statute of limitations is an absolute deadline that must be met and failure to do so cannot be excused based on fairness or even extreme hardship.

This is why it is essential to seek legal advice as soon as you are injured so that your Mississippi personal injury attorney has time to research the law, investigate the facts and file your claim.  Sometimes when personal injury victims delay in seeking assistance, personal injury law firms will decline to take a case because there is insufficient time to investigate the merits of the case and file a lawsuit without risking non-compliance with the statute of limitations.  The determination of when the statute of limitation expires can also be complicated by special rules that designate when the time starts or when it is suspended in certain situations (called “tolling”).

Some deadlines for pursuing claims related to torts (i.e. injuries caused by wrongful acts) are even shorter.  The statute for limitations for bringing a medical malpractice claim in Mississippi is only two years while a lawsuit for libel or slander must be initiated within a year.  There are other deadlines that may apply that shorten the time line for pursuing a claim for personal injuries.  For example, a public entity may fail to make remedial measures to an intersection that public officials know is unsafe and that has been the location of many collisions.  Generally, you will be forced to comply with special procedures including filing a Notice of Claim before filing a lawsuit against a public entity.  These time limits are much shorter than the statute of limitations and may be as short as only a few months.

If you have suffered serious injury caused by the misconduct of another, you should seek immediate legal advice.  Most personal injury law firms in Mississippi offer a free consultation with no obligation so that they can assess the value of your claim, and you can obtain information about your options.  The experienced Mississippi personal injury attorneys at Barrett Law have been providing effective representation to Mississippi personal injury victims for over 75 years.  We provide diligent legal representation and impassioned advocacy so we invite you to call us today at 662-834-2376 to learn how we can help.

Anyone visiting a local mall may have seen a security guard scooting around on a two wheeled upright transportation device called a Segway scooter.  These upright scooters which are controlled by leaning in a particular direction have become the stuff of comic fodder on television sitcoms and movies like Mall Cop.  Despite these depictions as amusing but harmless gadgets, these images mask a darker side to Segway scooter vehicles that may result in devastating injuries.  A Connecticut man who was severely injured in a Segway accident won a judgment against the company for $10 million last month.

John Ezzo, 23, was injured during a competition that was coordinated by the New Hampshire based company Segway Inc. that manufactures the odd looking two wheel upright scooters.  The competitors were asked to navigate an obstacle course while wearing blindfolds.  Segway Inc. did not provide helmets to the competitors.  While it may be legitimately asked how the company did not see disaster on the spectrum, Ezzo predictably fell off the Segway and suffered a traumatic brain injury when his head impacted the ground.  Ironically, the company recommends that consumers that purchase Segway scooters wear helmets when operating the devices so the jury may have been influenced by the company failing to follow its own safety warnings designed to reduce the risk of injury associated with the vehicles.

The size of the jury verdict represented both economic damages like lost income, medical costs and partial future disability as well as non-economic damages like pain and suffering and impaired quality of life.  Ezzo who is young was forced to quit college and now works doing odd jobs as a handyman.  The difference in earning potential after suffering his injuries over the course of his lifetime is compensable.  The pain and suffering and impaired enjoyment of life also is considered over his expected life span which means that his relative youth typically justifies more extensive damages.

Segway scooters are becoming increasingly popular and can be fun forms or recreation, but they can also be dangerous.  They lack safety equipment such as structural protection, seat belts or air bags, and they are unstable compared to other forms of transportation.  Falls from Segway scooters can result in catastrophic head injuries and even wrongful death especially when they are operated without a helmet.  If you or someone you love has been injured in a Segway accident or other accident involving a scooter, our experienced Mississippi personal injury attorneys at Barrett Law have been zealously pursuing compensation for injury victim for over 75 years.  We provide diligent legal representation and impassioned advocacy so we invite you to call us today at 662-834-2376 to learn how we can help.

If you are involved in a car accident, slip and fall, construction accident or other incident where you suffer serious injury, you may have the ability to seek financial compensation for your injuries in a personal injury lawsuit.  A successful personal injury claim requires an accident victim to establish that the negligent (i.e. unreasonably unsafe) conduct of the defendant “caused” injury to the plaintiff.  While this may sound straightforward enough, the notion of cause is different as it is used in personal injury litigation than when the term is used in ordinary parlance.

There are two prongs to proving causation in a personal injury lawsuit which may vary slightly depending on the jurisdiction but generally include: (1) actual causation and (2) proximate causation.  Actual causation is essentially what people normally think of when they say that an unsafe act “caused” injury to a victim.  There is an uninterrupted chain of events in which the unsafe conduct of the defendant resulted in injury to the defendant.  For example, a car runs a red light and T-bones another vehicle causing the vehicle occupant in the other vehicle to be thrown forward violently and suffer serious head and neck injuries.

This is an easy example, but the causal connection between a negligent party’s unsafe conduct and injuries suffered by an accident victim can be infinitely more tenuous.  A little more sophisticated example might include a chain reaction collision where a vehicle slams into stopped traffic causing multiple vehicles to collide with the vehicle in front of them.  Again, it is easy to understand that while the driver that started the collision did not actually collide directly with the last vehicle to suffer impact in the chain reaction collision, the driver that initiated the chain reaction accident was a “but for” cause of the injuries suffered by the last driver involved in the collision.  If not for the unsafe driving of the first driver who failed to stop, occupants of the last vehicle would not have been injured.

Actual cause (also referred to as “but for cause”) is not the only sense in which the term “cause” is used in Mississippi personal injury lawsuits.  There are certain situations when there is clearly a chain of events where it can be said that unsafe conduct resulted in injury where the connection is so convoluted and unforeseeable that liability is not imposed based on public policy.  The key issue is foreseeability both in terms of a particular kind of unsafe conduct causing injury as well as the injury being within the scope of the risk that would be anticipated from such unsafe conduct.

A recent case involving a train that collided with a pedestrian provides a good illustration of this type of causation.  In a Chicago case, a man was running to catch a train when another train hit the man who was tragically killed in the fatal train accident.  A large body part of the man who was killed was propelled a hundred feet through the air and struck a woman who was waiting to catch yet another train to work.  The woman suffered a broken leg, fractured wrist and shoulder injury.  There was no question that if the man had not been running to catch his train that the woman would not have been injured.  However, the question was whether the injury to the woman was a foreseeable risk of running across a railroad track to catch a train.  The court ruled that the risk was foreseeable so the estate of the man who was killed had to compensate the woman for her injuries.

One other issue that must be considered when trying to understand “causation” as the term is used in personal injury litigation is the impact of intentional acts of third parties.  Sometimes the intentional conduct of a third party may be considered a “superseding cause” that may cut off liability of a defendant.  However, this is only the case if the act or hazard created by the third party is not a foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s conduct.  Again, the best way to understand this distinction is by way of example.  If a driver pushes a passenger out of a moving vehicle, the driver would likely be liable for injuries suffered in the fall.  However, the driver might not be liable for additional injuries suffered if someone passing by mugs the passenger ejected from the vehicle.  Although the driver still might be found to be liable if the passenger was ejected from the vehicle in a high crime area.

While the train accident might show the outer boundary of foreseeability in some respects, it is certainly the case that when running across a train track one might be hit and thrown into a bystander causing injury.  The bottom line is that terms like “causation” may have very different meanings from the way these terms are used in everyday language.  If you are injured by the negligent conduct of a third party, the experienced Mississippi personal injury attorneys at Barrett Law can help explain these complexities that may complicate your personal injury lawsuit.  The experienced Mississippi personal injury attorneys at Barrett Law have been providing tenacious representation to personal injury victims for over 75 years.  We provide diligent legal representation and impassioned advocacy so we invite you to call us today at 662-834-2376 to learn how we can help.