Teaching your child about everything outside the home and allowing them to explore their world can be beneficial for their development, but it also carries a risk of injury.
Children are more susceptible to harm before they are fully grown. When another person injures your child because they behaved negligently, you have the right to hold them responsible with assistance from a knowledgeable personal injury attorney. A King of Prussia child injury lawyer could help when your child gets hurt in an accident by bringing a legal claim for compensation on your child’s behalf.
Taking care of a child outside the home can involve going to many different places, and children can suffer a variety of injuries in an accident. However, some places are more prone to child accidents, and certain injuries tend to affect children more often.
Common locations for child accidents can include:
The injuries your child could sustain can be physical and psychological, due to the underdevelopment of most children. Head injuries can more easily be traumatic brain injuries, bones can break more often, and smaller limbs and digits can be more seriously injured or even detached. Children can also suffer emotional and psychological trauma from their injuries or from witnessing a traumatic accident.
When your child does suffer an injury, a child injury lawyer in Media could help you exercise your options for compensation and support you along the way.
Most accidents are not intentional, so filing a personal injury lawsuit usually involves negligence, which is one person’s unreasonable behavior that causes injuries to someone else.
The injured party needs to prove four specific elements to bring a negligence suit: a duty of care, breach of that duty by unreasonable behavior, causation of injuries, and recognition of those injuries as damages. For example, staff at a childcare facility have a duty to take good care of the children, which could be breached by inappropriate or careless behavior that causes a child’s injuries. These injuries could be expressed as damages like medical costs, and pain and suffering.
The behavior of an injured child matters, too, because the state uses a system of comparative negligence. When an injured person was also negligent and partially caused their own injuries, such as a child knowing and seeing a risk and ignoring it, the amount of compensation awarded can be reduced proportionally under 42 Pa. Con. Stat. Ann. § 7102. The injured party could be prohibited from recovering anything at all when they are more than over 50 percent at fault.
Children do not have the same mental development and understanding of the world as adults, so their own negligence might be less of a factor. The law recognizes that children are not adults by extending the statute of limitations. Usually, personal injury actions must be brought within two years per 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 5524, but the two-year period does not start until after a child turns 18, giving parents more time to care for their child before suing.
A child injury lawyer could gather evidence and find out who should be held responsible for a child’s injury in King of Prussia.
You deserve to know you can get financial compensation for your child’s injury so you can focus on their treatment without worrying about unexpected medical bills. Having that protection and a dedicated advocate by your side can give you peace of mind as you and your child heal together.
Contact a King of Prussia child injury lawyer when you want to learn more. Our attorneys could walk you through the legal process and stand by you and your child. Call today for a free consultation.
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