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People rarely imagine how spinal cord injuries could change their lives forever. These injuries just happen, almost always in the most unexpected ways. El Centro residents, workers, and visitors alike suffer these catastrophic injuries in traffic accidents on I-8, when their ATVs and dune buggies roll over at Glamis Dunes, in preventable falls at work, and in countless other tragic incidents throughout the Imperial Valley.
Unlike so many preventable injuries that affect people in El Centro, damage to the spinal cord often permanently alters a victim’s life. Injury to the spinal cord causes paralysis in many cases, confining victims to wheelchairs for the rest of their days. The injury also means mountains of unexpected, unplanned expenses, which may exceed a million dollars just in the first year alone.
Many of the incidents and accidents that lead to spinal cord injuries happen because of the careless, reckless, or intentional actions of someone other than the victim. At Gomez Trial Attorneys, our El Centro Spinal Cord Injury Lawyers represent those injured individuals in seeking financial compensation from the people, companies, and/or government entities whose conduct caused the harm.
Contact Gomez Trial Attorneys today for a free case consultation to learn more about how our firm can help El Centro spinal cord injury victims obtain the money they need to adapt to the new normal of their suddenly-different lives.
Gomez Trial Attorneys is an award-winning Southern California personal injury law firm. Our lawyers represent clients who have suffered severe, life-altering injuries because of someone else’s wrongful and dangerous decisions or actions. It is our mission to secure the most money possible to help our clients recover and rebuild from catastrophic injuries.
Unlike most firms in the Imperial Valley region, we have the skill, know-how, and financial resources to tackle even the most complicated cases, and to stand up to even the most powerful insurance companies and defense lawyers.
Over our years of law practice, we have secured tens of millions of dollars of compensation for our injured clients through settlements and jury verdicts. Of course, we cannot promise that every case we handle will turn out favorably; however, we can guarantee that our clients will receive top-notch legal representation that aims to put them in the best possible position to maximize the compensation they ultimately receive.
A spinal cord injury generally occurs in connection with trauma to the spinal column. The cord is essentially a bundle of nerves that runs through the middle of the spinal column and carries messages from the brain to the body. The spinal cord can sustain an injury if damage to the spinal column pinches, ruptures, bruises, or puts pressure on the cord. An injury to the spinal cord can interrupt the flow of messages between the brain and body, often leading to a loss of sensation and paralysis in parts of the body below the site of the injury.
A wide variety of preventable incidents and accidents can lead to a spinal cord injury, including:
No matter what kind of incident or accident causes a spinal cord injury for an El Centro resident, worker, or visitor, the team at Gomez Trial Attorneys has the depth of knowledge and experience necessary to understand the nature and scope of the injury and to investigate the circumstances leading up to it.
Unlike many injuries that afflict people in El Centro and throughout the Imperial Valley, spinal cord injuries may never heal. Nerve cells in the spinal cord do not repair themselves in the same way that other cells in the body do. As a result, the loss of sensation and paralysis victims suffer may well last a lifetime.
A lifetime injury brings with it a lifetime of costs. For spinal cord injury victims and their families, those costs can easily reach into the millions of dollars. According to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which supports victims of spinal cord injuries and funds related research, the lifetime cost of living with a spinal cord injury ranges, on average, between $1 million and $4 million, depending upon the severity and nature of the trauma.
Numerous factors contribute to this overall cost, including:
Another difficulty that many El Centro spinal cord injury victims face: the unpredictability of many of these costs. Health complications can arise at any time, for example, that suddenly balloon the budget for caring for a spinal cord injury victim. Similarly, equipment can break down and victims may need to move or alter their living situations. At every one of life’s twists and turns, people living with spinal cord injuries encounter new and unexpected costs.
Gomez Trial Attorneys represents victims of El Centro spinal cord injuries in seeking compensation to help pay for the costs. Thanks to our years of experience and depth of knowledge about spinal cord injuries, we can calculate the full value of a client’s present and future costs. Our clients can feel confident that any legal action we take on their behalf will seek compensation for every dollar of damages that they have or will suffer.
Seeking compensation for an El Centro spinal cord injury typically starts with figuring out who should owe our clients money for their injuries and losses—in other words, who has a legal liability to our clients for damages.
Under California law, anyone who causes harm to someone else by engaging in unreasonably dangerous conduct, or by making an unreasonably dangerous decision, faces legal liability to that victim for money damages. As described above, spinal cord injuries happen as a result of a wide variety of accidents and incidents, no two of them exactly the same.
At Gomez Trial Attorneys, we approach every representation of an El Centro spinal cord injury victim as an exercise in peeling back the facts of a case to pinpoint the precise decisions and actions that led directly to our client getting hurt.
Depending upon the circumstances, legally liable parties can include:
These are just some parties who could have a legal liability to victims of an El Centro spinal cord injury victim. As we said, every case is different, and at Gomez Trial Attorneys, we leave no stone unturned in evaluating the decisions and actions that led to our client suffering harm. In fact, oftentimes, we find that more than one party has a liability to our client, which can benefit our client by offering multiple sources from whom to recover damages.
Our job at Gomez Trial Attorneys is also to evaluate and pursue every possible category of damages available to our clients under California law.
Circumstances vary, of course, but generally speaking, El Centro spinal cord injury victims can often take legal action seeking compensation for past and future:
In addition to the damages above, sometimes clients of Gomez Trial Attorneys can also ask a court to award punitive damages in their cases. These damages seek to punish and deter extreme or outrageous conduct on behalf of the defendant that led to a spinal cord injury. Not all incidents and accidents entitle an El Centro spinal cord injury victim to seek punitive damages, but our team pursues them aggressively when possible.
Perhaps more than most others, El Centro spinal cord injury victims need smart, skilled, aggressive legal representation on their side to help ensure that they never have to worry about paying for the treatments, services, equipment, and home modifications they need to live a normal life following a spinal cord injury. Gomez Trial Attorneys can provide just that kind of legal advocacy.
We tailor the legal services we provide to meet the needs and priorities of our clients. No two cases are alike.
Still, in representing El Centro spinal cord injury victims, our services often include:
A preventable spinal cord injury caused by someone else’s negligence can happen in an instant, changing your future forever. Your injury leaves you not just with significant, permanent loss of feeling and sensation in your body, but also leaves you with enormous future expenses and with the burden of adapting to a radically-altered life.
Spinal cord injury victims in El Centro often have numerous questions about their injury, prognosis, and future—worrying about not only what lies ahead for them, but for their family as well. Below, we answer some frequently asked questions about El Centro spinal cord injuries and the legal rights of victims who suffer them. For answers to specific questions about a spinal cord injury that has upended your life, contact an experienced El Centro spinal cord injury lawyer today.
A spinal cord injury typically results from a traumatic blow to the spine that fractures or dislocates the vertebrae, which in turn inflicts damage to the spinal cord. The injury typically disrupts the flow of signals from the brain to the body, resulting in paralysis and loss of sensation to the parts of the body connected to the cord below the site of the damage.
Doctors refer to the severity of a spinal cord injury in terms of its “completeness”.
In addition, when spinal cord injuries result in paralysis, they are referred to as:
Experienced El Centro spinal cord injury lawyers work to obtain compensation for victims of all classifications of spinal cord injuries.
There are four parts to the spine: the top (cervical), middle (thoracic), lower-middle (lumbar), and the bottom (sacral) portions.
The portion of the spine affected by an injury dictates where in the body the victim loses sensation and function.
El Centro residents, workers, and visitors who suffer a spinal cord injury often experience the following symptoms:
Additionally, after some accidents, there may also be an onset of emergency signs, including:
If you find yourself experiencing any of these symptoms following an accident, seek emergency medical help immediately—then call us if someone else caused the accident that resulted in your injury. We can help you recover the compensation you need to pay for your medical treatments and other costs associated with your injury.
Under California law, anyone whose unreasonable decisions or actions contributed to the cause of a spinal cord injury may have a legal liability to the victim for damages. Individuals, businesses, organizations, and even government agencies, can all face this type of liability.
It would be impossible to list all of the potential parties who could owe damages to a spinal cord injury victim here.
To give you an idea of the range of possible defendants in a lawsuit for damages, however, below we list some of the most common causes of spinal cord injuries in El Centro and the parties a victim can often hold accountable:
An experienced El Centro spinal cord injury attorney investigates the details of the incident that led to the client’s injury to identify all parties who may face legal liability to the victim under California law.
To collect compensation for your spinal cord injuries, your lawyer needs to build a case that proves that the defendant’s negligent actions resulted in your spinal cord injury.
To demonstrate negligence, your lawyer must show that:
To build a case that proves each of these facts, your lawyer collects evidence to prove how your injury happened, whose decisions or actions led to it, and what types of harm you suffered as a result.
Every El Centro spinal cord injury case has unique facts and circumstances. For that reason, the types of damages a victim might recover by taking legal action can vary from one case to the next. However, in general, victims of spinal cord injury in El Centro can take legal action seeking compensation for:
Economic damages. These damages compensate you for any monetary losses you suffered as a result of your spinal cord injury, including:
Non-economic damages. These damages compensate you for the harm you have suffered, but are not easy to put into dollars and cents:
Exemplary (or punitive) damages. Courts award these damages when the actions of the party at-fault for a spinal cord injury are particularly outrageous or malicious, to punish and deter that conduct.
We can’t say exactly, because every spinal cord injury case differs.
Generally speaking, the amount you may have the ability to recover as damages depends on three broad factors:
Experienced El Centro spinal cord injury lawyers dig deep into cases to secure the highest-quality evidence, and to identify all parties who have a legal liability to their clients, to give their clients the best possible opportunity to recover maximum compensation.
The timeline for a spinal cord injury claim in El Centro can vary from months to years, depending on the circumstances.
Spinal cord injury and their clients do not exercise much control over that timeline, which can depend on:
El Centro spinal cord injury victims can control one aspect of that timeline, however, and that is when they contact an experienced attorney. The sooner they take that important step, the sooner the rest of the process of securing compensation for them can get started.
Nothing, unless the lawyer gets you results.
Experienced El Centro spinal cord injury lawyers like those at Gomez Trial Attorneys offer free case evaluations to potential clients, so that cost does not deter victims and their families from asking about their legal rights.
Lawyers for spinal cord injury victims also generally always represent their clients on a contingent fee basis, which is when the lawyer’s only payment consists of a percentage of the money the lawyer succeeds in securing on the client’s behalf. The client pays no money to the lawyer upfront. If you do not recover anything, then you will not owe any fees to the lawyer.
In other words, you can afford the services of our experienced El Centro spinal cord injury lawyers. So, do not wait. If you have been injured in an accident in El Centro and suffered a spinal cord injury, contact an El Centro spinal cord injury lawyer today for a free case evaluation.
If a spinal cord injury suffered in or around El Centro, California, has upended your life, then you deserve to have a top-notch lawyer fighting to get you the money you need to meet the new and unexpected challenges ahead. Contact Gomez Trial Attorneys online or at (619) 237-3490 for a free case evaluation to learn about your potential legal rights to substantial compensation.
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Gomez Trial Attorneys
2299 West Adams Avenue, Suite 102
El Centro, CA 92243
(760)-259-2166
No Fees Unless We Recover Money On Your Behalf