East Meadow Personal Injury Attorney
Jacoby & Meyers, LLP
90 Merrick Avenue, Suite 601
East Meadow, NY 11554
(516) 542-0931
Personal Injury Accidents Are Common
Accidents happen every day. Luckily most of them result in a simple bump or bruise. However, sometimes these accidents lead to catastrophic outcomes, including debilitating injuries, astronomical medical expenses, and a lot of uncertainty for victims and their families.
You need to remember that motorists must drive with reasonable care, and property owners must provide you with a safe environment when you are on their premises. When these individuals and entities violate these duties and injuries result, you may qualify to seek monetary compensation. To determine whether you qualify to pursue a claim following an East Meadow personal injury accident, you need to talk to a legal team that you can trust, one that can get you the answers and justice you deserve. You should reach out to Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, to discuss the details of your case and determine your eligibility to seek compensation.
About Jacoby & Meyers, LLP
Founded in 1972, the law firm of Jacoby & Meyers, LLP aims to provide top-quality legal representation to everyone that needs it, not just those who can afford it. Today, with offices in New York and New Jersey, our firm represents clients with all different types of personal injury claims. Through it all, we have remained true to our word, and we provide straightforward and compassionate legal representations to all of our injured clients. Our attorneys make sure to not only offer victims the personal care they need, but we also pursue justice and compensation on their behalf.
When you decide to work with the law firm of Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we make it a point to provide you with free answers to all of your questions, free home visits, free hospital visits, and free secure online access that enables you to review your case files on our website.
We have won tens of thousands of cases and recovered millions in settlement and jury verdicts for our clients, and we know that with our experience, knowledge, skills, and resources, we can provide you the legal help you need.
Some of our most recent case awards include the following:
- $5,000,000 settlement for a car accident
- $4,200,000 settlement for an infant burned due to unsafe conditions
- $5,700,000 jury verdict for a bus accident
- $5,000,000 verdict against wrongful actions by a nursing home
- $4,000,000 verdict for medical malpractice
- $3,250,000 settlement for fire death
- $8,323,000 settlement for medical malpractice during birth
What Is Involved in an East Meadow Personal Injury Lawsuit?
In general, personal injury cases are legal disputes that arise when one individual suffers harm because of an injury or accident that another person causes through reckless or negligent actions. If the injured individual can prove that the other person caused the accident, the injured individual may receive compensation for their medical bills, ongoing medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering.
Usually, there are two types of outcomes in these East Meadow personal injury cases:
- Settlements: Many personal injury disputes often resolve through a settlement. Settlements often involve substantial negotiation, followed by a written agreement in which both sides decide to forgo any further action, choosing to settle the matter through the payment of a certain amount of compensation.
- Formal lawsuit: Following an accident, an injured individual (the “plaintiff”) files a civil complaint against another person, corporation, governmental agency, or business (the “defendant”). In this complaint, the plaintiff indicates that these individuals or entities acted carelessly, and that their actions caused an accident that resulted in the plaintiff suffering harm.
How Do You Prove Fault in an East Meadow Personal Injury Accident?
For you to bring a valid personal injury claim in East Meadow, you need to prove that the other party caused the accident that resulted in your injury. It may prove difficult to prove that the other party was responsible for your damages without also establishing that the other party acted negligently. Negligence is the failure to exercise appropriate care under the circumstances and involves harm caused by the at-fault party’s careless or reckless behavior.
When bringing a personal injury claim in East Meadow, it’s generally unimportant whether the negligence was accidental or intentional.
You must, however, establish the four required elements of negligence:
- The liable party owed you a duty of care: This first element means that the liable party owed the victim a legal obligation to protect him or her from unreasonable harm. For instance, if an individual is driving a car, these motorists owe a duty to other individuals on the road to drive safely, comply with traffic laws, and exercise caution.
- The liable party breached the duty of care: Under this element, the victim needs to show that the liable party failed to fulfill the duty of care to the victim. This breach can result from a wrongful act, failing to act, or even careless behavior. Back to our driving example, if motorists get behind the wheel intoxicated, then they have breached their duty of care to other people on the road.
- Causation: Next, victims must prove that this breach of duty resulted in their injuries. Specifically, victims must prove that the liable party’s negligence caused the accident that resulted in the victim’s bodily harm. It is not enough to just show that the driver was drunk. You need to also show that the motorist’s intoxication contributed to his or her reckless driving, which caused an accident and injuries.
- Damages: Finally, victims must prove that they suffered actual losses because of their injuries. These losses can include monetary expenses as well as emotional turmoil. For example, because of the motor vehicle crash, the other driver suffered extensive injuries, including broken bones and deep lacerations. Consequently, these injuries resulted in significant medical bills and lost wages.
Establishing the elements of a personal injury case often proves complicated and challenging, and it may require extensive detailed evidence. If you believe you suffered harm because of another person’s wrongful actions, you need to contact an experienced East Meadow personal injury attorney as quickly as possible. Once retained, these lawyers can get to work investigating the accident, including determining what happened and who was at fault.
What Types of Damages Can You Recover Following an East Meadow Personal Injury Accident?
If you can prove that another party was liable for an accident that resulted in your injuries, you may qualify to collect monetary damages. In New York, these damages include economic, non-economic, and punitive damages.
Economic damages: These are quantifiable losses that result from an accident and are easy to measure.
Economic damages include:
- Past, current, and future medical expenses. These costs consist of emergency medical services, ambulance rides, doctor visits, surgeries, prescription medications, and hospital stays
- Past, current, and future lost wages resulting from being out of work following the accident.
- Lost earning capacity
- Personal property damages
- At-home nursing care
- Household services, such as cleaning services or childcare services
- Medical devices, such as crutches or a wheelchair
- Rehabilitative costs, such as vocational and physical therapy
- Other out-of-pocket expenses
Non-economic damages: These losses are subjective and thus difficult to quantify.
Non-economic damages include:
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional anguish
- Loss of consortium
- Loss of companionship
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Loss of a limb
- Loss of reputation
- Scaring
- Disfigurement
Punitive damages: Unlike other compensatory damages, which are designed to compensate victims for their losses, punitive damages are intended to punish defendants for egregious and malicious actions and to deter similar actions again in the future. As a result, courts rarely award punitive damages.
Specific Factors That Determine the Value of an East Meadow Personal Injury Case
Once you can prove that the other party was liable for the accident that resulted in your injuries, you may pursue damages.
However, the amount of these damages will depend on several factors, including:
- The severity of the injuries (traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, head or neck injuries)
- Whether the injuries were caused by the accident or were pre-existing
- Whether the injuries leave the victim permanently disabled
- What types of medical treatments prove necessary following the accident
- Whether the victim needs ongoing treatments
- The client’s age
- Whether the victim requires replacement services that they did not need before the injury
- The occupation and earnings of the injured individual
- The credibility of the witnesses and the evidence presented
Working with the legal team of Jacoby & Meyers, LLP will not only help you understand which of these factors may influence the amount of your compensation, but retaining us will also allow us to prepare the strongest case in response to these factors and pursue maximum compensation.
7 Critical Steps to Take Following an East Meadow Personal Injury Accident
Following a personal injury accident, it is not uncommon for the scene to appear chaotic and overwhelming. However, even with the stress that accompanies an accident, it is still important to take certain actions that will help keep you safe and protect your legal rights.
These steps include the following:
- Call 911: The first thing you should do after an accident is to call 911. Not only can the police get you the help and emergency medical services that you need, but law enforcement will also quickly get to work investigating the accident scene. If you decide to pursue a claim, the resulting police report will likely provide you with vital information about the accident, including who was at fault.
- See a doctor: Even if you do not need emergency medical services, you still need to get examined by a doctor following an accident. Many times, dangerous injuries do not show any immediate symptoms, such as head and brain injuries. As a result, if you do not get medical help, these injuries may worsen and result in debilitating harm or even death, which is why getting checked over by a medical professional is critical to your health. Your doctors may also write down their findings in a medical report, which can provide you with crucial evidence regarding the harm you’ve endured and the extent of your damages.
- Collect evidence: If it is safe for you to do so, try to collect as much evidence as you can following your accident. This evidence may include pictures and videos of your visible injuries, any motor vehicles involved, dangerous conditions, road hazards, skid marks, weather conditions, and any other evidence that may help establish what happened.
- Get information from other people involved in the accident: If you were involved in a motor vehicle accident, make sure to get the names, contact information, insurance information, and driver’s license numbers from all other drivers involved in the crash.
- Witness information: If anyone was present at the time of your accident, get those individuals’ names and numbers. Their statements may prove beneficial to your claim down the road. Plus, you shouldn’t rely on the police to get contact information from all the witnesses present at the accident scene.
- Write in a journal: Following your accident, keep a journal of your injuries and how you are feeling. Make sure to jot down some notes every day about what you are going through because of your injuries, what you have had to miss out on in life, and other details about how you are handling the ordeal. This journal will provide your attorney with the necessary information regarding your pain and suffering.
- Contact an experienced east meadow personal injury attorney at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP: Following a personal injury accident, you do not want to wait too long to contact our experienced East Meadow personal injury attorneys. These lawyers can provide you with the legal help you want, gather critical evidence to establish liability and damages, and provide you with the support you and your family need during this difficult time.
East Meadow Personal Injury FAQs
Following a serious East Meadow personal injury accident, it’s normal to have numerous concerns and questions regarding your next steps. Specifically, asking—what treatments will I need? Will I ever fully recover from my injuries? When can I return to work? Is there someone that can help me get through this traumatic ordeal?
At Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we understand how critical these questions are, and we want to help you. With the following FAQs, we hope to provide you the information you need regarding a personal injury accident, the steps you need to take to pursue legal action, and how our legal team can go after maximum compensation on your behalf.
Frequently Asked Questions
When an individual sustains an injury in an accident, he or she is often unsure if the specific accident falls within the scope of a personal injury claim.
Personal injury is a broad field that includes many different types of injuries, but the following accidents are some of the most common East Meadow personal injury cases:
- Motor vehicle accident: When an individual sustains an injury in a motor vehicle accident that someone else caused, the injured individual can potentially seek compensation for resulting injuries and damages. However, victims need specific evidence that details the other party’s liability, the resulting injuries, and the related monetary losses.
- Product liability accidents: If someone sustains an injury while using a defective product, that individual is likely entitled to seek compensation for the injuries.
- Wrongful deaths: In a wrongful death accident, if an individual dies because of another person’s negligence, the deceased’s family is likely entitled to seek compensation.
- Medical malpractice: These cases often deal with injuries resulting from a doctor’s negligence, including taking incorrect or inappropriate actions regarding treatment.
- Slip and fall accidents: When an individual slips and falls on private or public property, he or she may qualify to seek compensation, depending on the circumstances. However, to succeed in this claim, the victim needs to show that the property was unexpectedly or unreasonably dangerous to others.
Following your accident, it is imperative to speak with an experienced East Meadow personal injury attorney that can go over your accident and help determine if you have a viable claim.
If you were involved in a personal injury accident, you should know that the insurance companies will attempt to contact you. It is in your best interest to avoid giving any recorded statements to these insurance companies. Many individuals fail to realize that the insurance company does not want to help them following their personal injury accidents. The companies’ interests lie in maximizing their profits, which means that they will try any tactic possible to get you to admit fault, which will allow them to deny or reduce the amount of your claim.
For these reasons, we urge you to avoid making any statements to these insurance companies. It is in your best interest to only provide insurance adjusters with the basic details of your accident and refer them to your attorney for all future discussions. Once retained, a personal injury attorney can handle all of these communications and ensure that you and your case receive fair treatment.
New York law sets a specific allotted time for injured individuals to file claims for their personal injuries. If you miss this deadline, then the law generally bars you from collecting compensation for your injuries.
If you suffered an injury in an East Meadow personal injury accident, you generally have three years from the date of the injury to pursue a legal claim; however, certain circumstances warrant an extension of this timeline. For instance, if your case involves an injury that is not immediately apparent, based on the discovery rule, you have three years from the date you discovered the injury or should have discovered the injury to pursue your claim.
Additionally, other statutes of limitations for personal injury accidents include:
- Wrongful death: The statute of limitations for wrongful death is two years from the date of death.
- Product liability cases: The statute of limitations for a product’s liability case is three years from the injury date; however, the discovery rule regarding time extensions also applies to these cases.
- Medical malpractice cases: The statute of limitations for medical malpractice cases is two and a half years from the date of the malpractice. However, if a foreign object is left in a victim’s body, the limitation is one year from the date of discovering this foreign object or from when the victim should have reasonably found the object.
- Premises liability cases: The statute of limitations for premises liability claims is three years from the date of the injury.
As you can see, determining the statute of limitations often proves difficult depending on the specific circumstances of an accident. When you work with Jacoby & Meyers LLP, however, we can help you determine precisely how much time you have to file your claim and whether any exceptions apply to your case.
Before you accept any settlement offer, it is vital to consider the specific circumstances of your accident. If you were involved in a personal injury accident, the results may prove disastrous. You may have skyrocketing medical expenses, require ongoing care, and be out of work. Verify that any settlement amount covers all of these current expenses and future costs.
Unfortunately, when insurance companies offer quick settlements shortly following an accident, these settlements rarely take all of these elements into consideration. Instead, the companies are trying to pay you the least amount of money possible to make this situation go away as quickly as possible. It’s important to speak to a knowledgeable East Meadow personal injury attorney before you agree to accept any offer from the insurance company.
A lawyer will not only help you understand if the settlement amount covers all of your expenses, but also, if the amount is insufficient, then your lawyer can negotiate with the insurance company and fight for increased compensation.
Slip and falls happen almost every day. Whether it’s due to poor lighting, slippery surfaces, icy walkways, or other hazards, these accidents often result in devastating injuries.
If you fall on someone else’s property—no matter if it is a public place, a business, or even at your place of work—the individuals or entities responsible for the dangerous condition that led to your accident may face liability for your injuries.
To pursue this slip and fall claim and recover money, you need to prove:
- The property owner owed you a duty of care to keep the property safe. This specific obligation will depend on why you were on the owner’s property.
- The property owner did not live up to this duty of care. For instance, if the property owner did not warn you of dangers or make the property safe, the property owner may face liability for any resulting injuries.
- You suffered harm because the property owner failed to live up to this legal obligation.
- This harm resulted in significant damages and monetary losses.
When you work with the legal team of Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we can go over your slip and fall claim and determine whether the property owner owed you an obligation and whether the owner failed to meet this obligation. If so, we can proceed with a claim pursuing compensation for the harm you endured as a result.
Workplace and other on-the-job accidents will most likely involve the state’s workers’ compensation program. Workers’ compensation is insurance that helps protect businesses and their employees from financial losses when an employee gets sick from a work-related cause or suffers harm on the job.
Following such an accident, it is your right to seek compensation to cover expenses and medical bills resulting from your work-related injury. However, similar to other accidents, workers’ compensation insurance companies will still use certain tactics in an attempt to reduce or avoid paying out on your workers’ compensation claim.
If you experience any of the following situations, you need to contact an experienced East Meadow personal injury attorney as soon as possible:
- You were injured while working.
- You did not receive full or any coverage.
- You have not yet fully recovered from your injuries, but your employer is already asking for you to return to work.
- Your workers’ compensation claim was denied.
When you work with a knowledgeable legal team, these attorneys can go over your case, explain all of your legal options, and pursue the damages you need to recover.
Unfortunately, no set period dictates how long a personal injury lawsuit can take.
In fact, many factors can influence a personal injury lawsuit timeline, including:
- The severity of your injuries
- The medical treatments that you will need
- Whether the insurance company is willing to participate in negotiations
As a result of these factors, personal injury cases often take anywhere from a few months to a few years, especially if the case ends up going to trial. However, when you work with Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we will pursue maximum compensation on your behalf and make sure to keep you informed throughout the process.
Personal injury accidents are complicated and extremely detail-oriented. If you have been injured in an accident, you should not have to tackle these complicated legal proceedings on your own. Rather, you should enlist the help of a legal team that understands personal injury law and can fight for justice on your behalf.
If you retain Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, our lawyers can:
- Answer your questions: We can go over your personal injury case in detail, answer any questions and concerns you have, and provide you with legal options.
- Investigate the accident: We can thoroughly investigate your accident, gather critical evidence, interview relevant witnesses, and obtain necessary reports, all of which will help us figure out what happened and how to proceed with your claim.
- Bring in the experts: We understand that many of these personal injury cases require experts to help prove fault. If you decide to pursue a personal injury case, we can bring in the experts, including accident reconstructionists, doctors, economists, and engineers, to help substantiate your claim.
- Handle the negotiations: We can handle the discussions and negotiations with the insurance companies and the defense lawyers, ensuring that your case is treated with respect, and we go after a settlement you want.
- Proceed to trial, if needed: If the other side is unwilling to negotiate, we are prepared to take your case to trial and fight for maximum compensation on your behalf.
If you or a family member sustained an injury in an East Meadow personal injury accident, don’t wait any longer to reach out to an experienced attorney to discuss the details of your accident and determine your eligibility to pursue compensation. At Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, we have experience successfully negotiating and litigating personal injury cases, and we approach each case with compassion and understanding.
Contact Jacoby & Meyers, LLP Today
Personal Injury Lawyer, Andrew Finkelstein
At Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, our legal team has experience handling personal injury cases, and we understand what injured individuals are going through following their accidents. Accordingly, we provide compassionate legal services that focus on maximizing injured individuals’ ultimate compensation. If you retain us to handle your East Meadow personal injury claim, we will work to develop a strong legal case while you focus on your mental and physical recovery.
Don’t let the stress of a legal claim negatively affect your treatment and recovery; rather, let the personal injury attorneys at Jacoby and Meyers, LLP work with you to pursue maximum compensation for your injuries.
Contact Jacoby & Meyers, LLP today, start a webchat with one of our live representatives, or to speak with an experienced personal injury attorney about your case and your legal options at (877) 565-2993. Contact us today!
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