Long Island Electrical Shock And Electrocution Injury Lawyer

Electrical shock and electrocution injuries can prove catastrophic. Some victims may never fully recover, leaving them out of work and unable to participate in their previous activities. Many have ongoing treatment, care, and support costs. Some need around-the-clock care.

When someone suffers electrical shock and electrocution injuries, another party may bear responsibility. These incidents commonly happen on construction sites or on another party’s premises and a contractor, business owner, or another party may have to pay for your losses.

If this happened to you or a loved one, working with a personal injury lawyer can help you recover compensation and hold the at-fault party accountable. Most state laws allow victims to hold negligent parties legally responsible for their injuries, expenses, and damages. Your Long Island Electrical Shock And Electrocution Injury Lawyer can build a case and help you pursue justice.

What Injuries Commonly Result From Electrical Shock and Electrocution?

When people consider electrical shock and electrocution injuries, they often think of burns. While thermal burns from contact with electricity do occur and often prove common in these incidents, people can suffer several injuries after an electrical shock and electrocution.

Electric current can cause:

• Extreme pain
• Muscle contractions that prevent them from letting go of the current source, increasing potential injuries
• Respiratory arrest
• Cardiac arrest because of the effect on the heart’s function
• Damage to muscles, nerves, and other tissues from the current
• Thermal burns to the skin and other tissues
• Falls or other injuries that occur because of the shock

When someone suffers an electric shock, their symptoms can vary widely depending on many factors. This includes the type and strength of the voltage, how long the electrocution occurred, their previous health, and other factors.

Many people may have received minor shocks that might prove disturbing but not painful.

When you have a serious electrical injury, however, your symptoms could include:

• Loss of consciousness
• Chest pains and other signs of a heart attack
• Irregular heartbeat
• Difficulty breathing
• Seizures
• Serious burns on the skin
• Headache
• Muscle spasms

Any serious electrical shock or electrocution incident will constitute a medical emergency and require immediate medical care. The victim could require extensive treatment, rehabilitation, and ongoing support. Many people recover from serious electrocution injuries, but others live with life-long challenges or pass away from their injuries.

For a free legal consultation with a electrical shock and electrocution injury lawyer serving Long Island, call 516-451-7900

How Shock and Electrocution Injuries Occur?

Electrical injuries often occur because of negligence. If property owners, contractors, workers, and individuals follow the rules or best practices, they don’t have to happen.

However, electrocution injuries may occur from:

• Contact with defective or broken machines or tools
• Accidental contact with outlets, cords, or exposed wiring
• Contact with high-voltage power lines
• Making unsafe repairs on outlets, switches, or appliances
• Children playing with cords or outlets
• Weapons such as stun guns
• Swimming pools with improperly wired or faulty lights, pumps, or chlorinators

Workers commonly face electrocution incidents. Children and adolescents also rank among the most common victims. About half of all occupational electrical injuries occur because of contact with power lines. About 25 percent occur because of defective or dangerous machines or tools. The rest usually result from accidental contact with electricity in some other way.

If you want to know for sure if negligence caused your injury or who might bear responsibility for your damages, contacting a personal injury lawyer can help. Most provide a free consultation for injured parties. Someone at the firm can assess your case and talk about your rights. You could have options even if your injuries occurred at work.

Liability in Electrical Shock and Electrocution Incidents

Who bears liability for an electrical shock and electrocution injury depends on what happened and why. In many cases, a negligent party bears liability. This means you must identify whose negligence led to the injuries before determining who might bear liability.

Building a case to show negligence requires confirming four elements exist in your case:

• Duty of care
• Breach of duty
• Causation
• Harm

Property owners, site owners, and product manufacturers all have a duty of care to protect those who visit their property, work on their site, or use their products. Therefore, they must repair any significant hazards or defects as soon as possible. Failure to do so could result in serious injuries and legal liability.

Victims could bring a case against the liable party in these situations. Alternatively, you could demand a payout from their liable insurance provider and negotiate a fair settlement based on your recoverable losses. These vary based on the case’s details.

Workers who face injuries on the job may seek workers’ comp benefits. In some situations, workers can also file a third-party lawsuit if negligence caused their injury, although they may face limits in suing an employer. Several states protect workers, such as New York’s Scaffold Law law. An attorney could file a third-party lawsuit as applicable and work with your workers’ comp lawyer to ensure you seek all the compensation you deserve.

Recoverable Damages in Electric Shock Injury Cases

The recoverable damages in these cases depend greatly on the case facts, the severity of the injuries, and the necessary treatment and care. To seek compensation, you must have documentation of your expenses and losses. You can begin a paperwork file to help you better understand your damages.

This file could include:

• Medical bills
• Relevant medical records
• Receipts
• Income documentation and previous statements

You should not agree to a settlement until your injuries reach maximum medical recovery or you understand your prognosis and future treatment needs. After all, these expenses can play a crucial role in your financial recovery.

Some common recoverable damages include:

• Medical care costs and related expenses
• Future treatment costs, as estimated by your doctors and experts
• Income losses related to time away from work
• Diminished earning capacity based on lasting injuries
• Miscellaneous related expenses for necessary travel, parking, accommodations for disabilities, adaptive devices, home renovations, and more
• Pain and suffering and other noneconomic losses

Before you can demand a fair payout or agree to a just settlement, you need to know the value range of your recoverable damages. Calculating your current medical bills and lost income can prove more straightforward. In addition, documentation exists for these costs in the form of bills and previous income statements.

However, this includes just a portion of your overall losses. You could seek significant compensation from other categories of damages. For instance, you also want to ensure you seek compensation for your future and noneconomic damages. Determining these costs often requires more work and evidence.

Future Damages

It can prove difficult to know the medical treatment and care you might need after you settle your injury case. This holds true if you seek compensation for caring for a loved one with catastrophic injuries. Determining how much this future or ongoing care could cost can require expert input from doctors, specialists, economists, and others.

Noneconomic Damages

Noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, constitute intangible losses. By their very nature, they do not have a financial value. Lawyers have accepted ways of assigning a monetary value to these damages. Still, you likely want someone with experience handling similar cases and an understanding of the legal process. Again, an attorney may prove a crucial resource for valuing your intangible losses.

How a Personal Injury Attorney Helps With Electrocution Cases?

If you or your loved one suffered electrical shock and electrocution injuries, you do not have to file an insurance claim and navigate the claims process on your own. Hiring a law firm to represent you comes with many benefits. In addition, many injury attorneys work based on contingency. Therefore, you do not need to pay them upfront or out of pocket.

Personal injury attorneys can handle insurance claims, trials, appeals, negotiations, arbitration, and mediation. When you pursue a fault-based case, you can count on your attorney to:

Represent Your Best Interests and Protect Your Rights

As a victim of a negligence incident, you have a right to pursue fair and just compensation based on the expenses and losses you experienced. You should protect this right to ensure you can recover the money you need to pay for your current and future needs. Electrical shock and electrocution can lead to extensive treatment, care, and support needs.

You should not have to pay for this care and support out of your pocket. Those responsible for your injuries should also bear accountability for the expenses and losses you endured. However, missteps can cause you to lose your right to fair compensation or allow the insurance company to reduce your payout.

Your personal injury attorney will know how to recognize the tactics insurers use to strip victims of their rights and reduce the value of their claims. They will handle all communication with the insurance company, document the value of your claim, and take other steps to ensure you seek and recover compensation based on the damages you experienced.

Build the Case

Attorneys ensure they have the necessary evidence to proceed with the case and win before they demand compensation from the insurer or file a lawsuit. They take the time to investigate what happened, show negligence occurred, and identify the liable party.

The evidence in an electrical shock injury case could include:

• An incident report from the police or other first responders
• Eyewitness interviews
• Video or photos
• Physical evidence, such as the defective product
• Documentation of similar cases with the same tool or appliance
• Relevant medical records
• Expert testimony
• Paperwork showing expenses and losses

Calculate the Claim Settlement Range

Personal injury lawyers know how to document damages and calculate fair settlement ranges for these cases. They understand the necessary paperwork and when to contact experts to help them determine the costs of future treatment or ongoing care needs. Most have networks of experts they work with, ensuring you have someone available who can contribute to your case as needed.

They also ensure they have the evidence to show the judge or jury your related damages if the case goes to trial. Understanding the case’s value and demonstrating it when necessary can prove essential to getting a fair recovery.

Handle the Claim or Lawsuit

When you hire an attorney for your electrical shock and electrocution injury case, they will handle your claim or lawsuit. They can manage all aspects of the case, including all communication with the insurance company, liable party, and court. You can focus on your treatment, healing, therapies, and other important steps to return to as many of your previous activities as possible.

Not only can you focus on your health, but you also do not have the stress or frustration of figuring out the claims process or dealing with the insurance company on your own. Instead, you have someone taking care of it who knows the process, how to use proven negotiation techniques to get a payout, and how the insurance company will try to avoid paying you the money you deserve.

How Long Do I Have to File an Electric Shock and Electrocution Lawsuit?

Most personal injury cases settle without going to trial. Many premises liability and defective product cases end with a negotiated settlement that pays fair compensation based on the victim’s expenses and losses. Some victims do not file a lawsuit in these cases. They can reach a fair monetary agreement, and they have no need to take their case to trial.

However, you should protect your right to sue. Filing a lawsuit provides leverage when negotiating with the liable party and their insurer.

Some reasons why you might need to sue include:

• The insurer will not offer a fair compensation agreement.
• Disagreements exist about the facts of the case.
• The insurer or liable party refuses to accept blame.
• Your attorney recommends a lawsuit for other reasons.

Each state has laws that limit how long you can wait to sue. Missing the deadline set by the statute of limitations could mean losing your right to take the case to trial. The deadline for suing generally falls between one year and four years.

For example, the statute of limitations for victims hurt in New York is usually three years under state law. In most cases, state law generally offers two years to file a wrongful death lawsuit. Exceptions to these laws exist that can extend or reduce your time. If you must sue a municipality in New York, for instance, you will have significantly less time to file suit.

Act Quickly to Protect Your Right to Seek Compensation After an Electrocution

Most injury attorneys who handle premises liability or construction incident cases provide complimentary consultations. You can speak with a team member to learn about your case, the applicable laws in your area, and other important information that will help you choose how to proceed. In addition, someone at the firm can assess the case’s facts and discuss the possible outcomes of an insurance claim or lawsuit.

As soon as your condition stabilizes, contact an attorney who can review your case with you and help you understand your rights. Most personal injury attorneys represent clients based on contingency. They do not charge upfront fees, and you will not pay attorney’s fees unless they recover compensation in your case. This makes it possible for anyone to hire a lawyer to advocate for them during this difficult time.

Contact Rosenberg & Gluck

If you have been injured by electrical shock, contact our office by e-mail or call us at (631) 451-7900 to set up an appointment. We will provide you with a free initial consultation to discuss your claim. Off-site visits are available, whether in your home or in the hospital.