Types of Injuries That You Can Sue For

Personal injury lawyers handle cases involving accidents, negligence, intentional wrongful acts and abuse. Personal injury cases can involve a wide variety of injuries. Below is an overview of some of the main types of injuries that an Illinois personal injury attorney will handle.

Bodily Injuries
Bodily Injury includes not only broken bones or burns, but also injuries to your rotator cuff, knee, foot, back and neck. Back and neck injuries are extremely common after car accidents. If you think you are hurt after an accident you should get medical treatment right away. The longer you wait to seek treatment the harder it is to prove it’s related to the original accident. More importantly, your health can greatly suffer if you wait too long.

Traumatic Brain Injuries.
Brain Injuries describe serious and permanent injuries to the brain. There are three kinds of traumatic brain injuries:
1. Bruising - This happens when brain tissue is forced into the skull. Oftentimes the tissue strikes the hard skull and ruptures blood vessels which causes blood to enter other parts of the brain, placing more pressure on the brain tissue and causing the brain to stop working.
2. Swelling - When brain tissue continues to swell and the skull cannot expand to accommodate the swollen tissue, there is extreme pressure on the skull and it can result in death.
3. Tearing - This happens when delicate tissue in the brain tears apart because of a strong impact to the head or body.

Concussions
A concussion can result in a brain injury, depending on the severity. A concussion results from a shock to the head and can vary in severity from minor pain to brain injury. Oftentimes, people associate a concussion with a temporary loss of consciousness but a concussion can occur without a loss of consciousness.

Paraplegia and quadriplegia?
Paraplegia is an injury of the spinal cord, where complete paralysis from the waist down occurs.
Quadriplegia is an injury of the spinal cord, where complete paralysis from the neck down occurs.

Disc injuries
A disc injury describes an injury where a disc in your back or neck bulges or herniates as the result of trauma, an accident or heavy lifting. If you experience shooting pain or numbness, you should seek medical assistance immediately. Typically, a doctor will order an MRI to diagnose a disc injury. An x-ray can not show a herniation.

Burn Injuries
First degree burns affect the first layer of the skin and are the least damaging. Second-degree burns affect the first and second layers of the skin. Third degree burns are the most serious and damage all skin layers and tissue under the skin.

When hiring an attorney, different law firms have minimal requirements for how injured someone must be before they will represent them as a client. If you have a unique or catastrophic injury, the right attorney for you is probably different than had you simply broken a leg and made a great recovery.

If you have experienced any of the above and want to speak to a personal injury attorney, contact us. We are attorneys who won’t represent you. Rather we will answer your questions and recommend an attorney who is experienced and has handled injuries similar to yours in the past.