New York Personal Injury Lawyers / New York Child Injury Attorneys

New York Child Injury Attorney

Parents across the Empire State, from Buffalo to Brooklyn, spend much of their daily lives working to make sure their children grow up happy, healthy, and safe. They drive their sons and daughters to school, work long hours to put a roof over their children’s heads and nutritious food on the table, volunteer in PTAs, and coach in sports leagues. Raising a child is the work of a lifetime.

Which makes it so traumatic for children and parents when a child suffers an injury because of someone else’s careless, reckless, or intentionally harmful actions. Injured children and their families endure terrible physical, emotional, and financial pain. They deserve justice and compensation from the individual, company, or public entity at fault for their suffering.

For nearly 50 years, New York parents of injured children have turned to Jacoby & Meyers, LLP to represent them in fighting for justice and compensation. Contact our New York Child Injury Lawyers today for a free case evaluation.

Jacoby & Meyers, LLP—Child Injury Lawyers

The experienced, caring lawyers at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP spend their careers providing top-quality legal representation for people of all ages who suffer injuries because of someone else’s wrongful actions.

Founded in 1972, the firm has proudly, zealously represented generations of New York families enduring the trauma of an injury to a child. Many of the members of our team are parents themselves. For us, fighting to get justice for injured children is a personal mission as much as a professional one.

Over nearly five decades of law practice, Jacoby & Meyers, LLP has recovered millions of dollars for victims of preventable childhood injuries and their families. We cannot guarantee results in any particular case, of course. However, we can promise to fight for the interests of injured children and their families with the determination and compassion they deserve.

“If it were not for the integral legal team of experts at Jacoby & Meyers I would not be where I am today with my recovery. I highly recommend hiring Jacoby & Meyers should you ever find yourself injured in an accident, and an individual or company needs to be held accountable for their negligence.” -C.J.
★★★★★

Common Child Injury Incidents in New York

Childhood injuries happen all the time, many resulting from nothing more than a child’s curiosity, inexperience, and lack of appreciation of dangers.

Still, that does not mean that adults should allow child injuries to happen. In New York, we all have a duty to take reasonable steps to keep children safe from harm.

Adults who fail to live up to those duties can increase the risk of children suffering harm in incidents involving:

• Choking;
• Falling;
• Drowning;
• Motor vehicle accidents;
• Animal attacks or dog bites;
• Hazardous or defective products;
• Poisoning; and
• Birth injuries.

This is only a partial list, of course. Virtually any careless, reckless, or intentional action on the part of an adult can lead to a child injury under the wrong circumstances. No matter how a child in New York suffers an injury, the experienced, compassionate team of lawyers at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP has the skill and resources to hold the parties at fault legally and financially accountable.

Legal Liability for New York Child Injuries

In New York, the law holds individuals, companies, and public entities legally and financially accountable for unreasonably dangerous decisions or actions that cause children harm. All New Yorkers must take reasonable steps to keep children safe from harm.

When a child suffers a preventable injury, the experienced team at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP gets to work investigating the incident to determine who failed to take those preventive steps. Every case is different, of course, so the identity of the party at-fault for a child’s injury can vary widely.

However, frequently our team finds that one or more of the following types of parties face legal liability for harm done to a child:

• Property owners, occupants, and managers, especially those who have special duties to secure their premises to prevent children from having unsafe and unsupervised access to property features such as swimming pools, trampolines, abandoned buildings, and construction sites.
• Toy or playground equipment manufacturers, who face liability for selling products that put children in harm’s way;
• Dog owners, who have legal liability when their pets attack a child;
• Schools, teachers, and other caregivers, who take on the immense responsibility of looking after children and making sure they stay safe in educational and other settings;
• Coaches, scout leaders, and youth-oriented organizations, who, like schools and teachers, must ensure the safety of the children in their care.
• Motorists who cause traffic accidents that harm children; and
• Doctors and other health care professionals, who fail to provide the required standard of medical care to child patients, leading to harm.

This, too, represents only a partial list of the parties who could face legal liability for a child’s injury in New York. Parents can trust the children injury lawyers at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP to investigate the circumstances of their child’s injury to identify all parties who should face legal and financial accountability.

New York Child Injuries Due to Dangerous Premises and Products

Two common scenarios involving child injuries in New York are children getting hurt because of an unsafe condition or situation on someone’s property, and children suffering injuries because of an unsafe consumer product. At Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we have years of experience helping parents hold property owners and product manufacturers accountable in these frightening, traumatic injuries.

Dangerous Premises and Attractive Nuisances

Children commonly, and tragically, suffer harm when adults fail to keep them safe and supervised around potentially hazardous property features. Take, for example, a playground or a swimming pool. When properly secured and supervised, each can offer hours of healthy childhood fun and activity. However, both also have the potential to do great harm to a child who accesses them without proper adult oversight and safety measures in place.

In New York, property owners have a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent children from having unsupervised access to property features that could attract and injure them, which lawyers refer-to as attractive nuisances.

Swimming pools, playgrounds, backyard trampolines, and construction sites represent common examples of attractive nuisances that property owners and others must secure against unsafe access by children. Failure to take these reasonable steps exposes those property owners to legal liability when children get hurt.

Defective Products

New York children also face danger from a wide range of consumer products, from toys to household cleaners. Ingesting poisonous products is a common mode of childhood injury. So is the misuse of household implements as toys. Sometimes it seems as if young children, in particular, have a limitless ability to find dangerous ways to use the most common items and objects.

Under New York law, manufacturers of consumer products face strict legal liability if their products contain defects that make them unreasonably dangerous for use as intended and a consumer suffers an injury as a result, which lawyers refer to as product liability. Defects can include an unreasonably dangerous product design, manufacturing flaws in a product, or the lack of an adequate warning on a product about its dangers.

New York Child Abuse Injuries

Perhaps no injury to a child is more heinous than one inflicted on purpose by an adult. At Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we fight to make sure children victimized by an abuser receive justice and compensation to the fullest extent allowed under New York law. We have the skill and financial resources to hold even the largest and most powerful institutions accountable for the abuse of a child by an employee or volunteer, including schools, churches, and national scouting organizations.

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse, in particular, have special rights under New York law. Until August 14, 2021, anyone, of any age, who suffered sexual abuse in New York has an opportunity to file a lawsuit against their abuser and any entity or institution that facilitated or enabled acts of abuse. The team at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP invites any survivor of child sexual abuse to contact us today to learn about the potentially valuable rights you currently have under New York law to hold your abuser and others accountable.

New York Child Injuries and the Statute of Limitations

In New York, the statute of limitations for New York child injury cases is three years from the date of an injury in most cases. However, New York law provides a longer period of time to take action for a child’s injury in many cases.

Technically, children own the right to take legal action. However, in most cases, they cannot exercise that right until they reach the age of majority. So, the statute of limitations period for child injuries usually will not begin to run until the child’s 18th birthday. In other words, in most cases, the right to take legal action for an injury suffered as a child lasts at least until the person’s 21st birthday (3 years after the 18th birthday).

However, exceptions to this rule lengthen or shorten the time period in some cases. For example, in a medical, pediatric, or dental malpractice case involving injuries to an infant, the action must be sued within ten years of accrual. You must bring claims against a municipal entity within as little as a few months of the person’s 18th birthday. Survivors of child sexual abuse have until their 55th birthday, in most cases, to take legal action (and currently also benefit from a special law that allows any survivor to file a claim, as discussed above).

In other words, the statute of limitations for taking legal action relating to an injury to a child in New York can get complicated. At Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we have years of experience guiding our clients through the statute of limitations rules, to ensure their rights stay protected.

What Do You Need to Do if You Suspect Your Child Suffered an Injury in New York

Parents can feel overwhelmed by emotion and stress when their child suffers an injury, which can cloud their judgment and put their own and their child’s legal rights at risk. Every situation is different, of course, so we cannot offer one-size-fits-all guidance to parents enduring an injury to their child.

However, parents may:

• Seek immediate medical care. Parents who insist on treating their child at home first, perhaps waiting to see if the child’s condition worsens, can put their child’s health and welfare at risk. Seeking immediate medical care after a child gets injured can rule out potentially life-altering, or life-threatening, injuries. It also documents the connection between the incident and the child’s injury, which could prove important in any later legal action.
• Collect names and contact information. If possible, gather the names and contact information for anyone who witnessed what happened to a child, so that a lawyer can interview them later about what they saw.
• Take pictures or videos of dangerous conditions or items, and do not throw anything away. If a child’s injury resulted from an unsafe product or property condition, then take photos or video footage of that condition or item. If you can, hold on to the item itself, rather than throwing it away.
• Track your expenses. Keep all records of any expenses you incur because of a child’s injury, from medical bills to insurance statements to receipts from the pharmacy. You likely have the right to recover compensation for any expense you can prove, so keep close track of them.

Child Injury Statistics (Nationwide and in New York)

Nationwide, unintentional injuries represent the leading cause of death among children. Every year, more than 12,000 children die from unintentional injuries, and more than 9.2 million receive treatment for nonfatal injuries in hospital emergency rooms. In New York, unintentional injuries lead to more than 18,000 hospitalizations for New York children age 19 and younger.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, statistics show that:

• Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of fatal injuries to children under 19.
• For children aged one year and under, two-thirds of deaths were a result of suffocation.
• For children aged one to four, drowning was the leading cause of death.

How Jacoby & Meyers, LLP Can Help With Your New York Child Injury Case

Child injury cases are traumatizing events, not only for the child but for families as well. Our team of caring, determined lawyers at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP understands parents’ fears and concerns, and we work hard to make sure children and their families obtain the compensation they need and deserve to move past this difficult time.

The steps we take for our clients vary widely depending on the circumstances, but they often include:

• Investigating how a child injury happened to identify all of the ways the child and family suffered harm, and all of the parties who should face legal and financial responsibility.
• Communicating with families in language they can understand, and answering questions promptly.
• Preparing a legal strategy that works for a child’s and family’s needs and goals.
• Taking legal action in and out of New York court to safeguard the child’s interests and to pursue the child’s rights to compensation.
• Negotiating the settlement of a child injury claim when possible.
• Litigating in court to see justice done for an injured child, including going to trial if that is what it takes to secure fair compensation.

Call Our Experienced, Caring New York Child Injury Lawyers

If your child suffered an injury in New York because of someone else’s dangerous decisions or actions, then you and your child may have valuable legal rights to compensation. To learn more, contact the law offices of Jacoby & Meyers, LLP today, start a chat with one of our live representatives, or call us at (877) 565-2993 for a free case evaluation.
Jacoby & Meyers, LLP
39 Broadway Suite 1910,
New York, NY 10006
(212)-445-7000