San Bernardino Personal Injury Attorneys

It only takes the span of a few moments to change your life forever. After that, the life you once knew vanishes and you may find that the road to recovery which lies ahead is a long, tough journey. Nobody should have to do this alone.

Injured in an accident? Get a real trial lawyer. Get Gomez.

Serving the San Bernardino area for years, Gomez Trial Attorneys has resources, time, and experience to dedicate our clients. We have built our San Bernardino personal injury law firm with trial attorneys who put our clients’ needs, and the needs of their families, first. Our San Bernardino personal injury lawyers come from a diverse background and a multitude of prestigious law schools around the nation. We are a line of defense when taking on personal injury cases in San Bernardino.

Gomez Trial Attorneys has won monumental cases for our clients, with significant settlements and payouts over the years. We are committed to our clients and fight zealously for them, whether in a court of law or at the negotiation table. The dedication of our team of San Bernardino personal injury lawyers and paralegals has leveled the playing field for ordinary people up against the odds. Gomez Trial Attorneys may be the right fit for you.

What Is a Personal Injury?

Personal injury covers a very wide spectrum of accidents and damages. If you have suffered an injury, you may receive compensation, regardless of the severity of the injury. The compensation can also depend upon the amount of money lost, changes to your quality of life, and many other factors.

Here are some components that can establish personal injury:

• Physical trauma: This is physical trauma received from some form of blunt force trauma or penetrating trauma, either intentional or accidental. Broken bones, bruises, cuts, hemorrhaging, burns and injuries that require medical treatment are all part of this world. Even if injuries are not life-threatening, they may still affect the quality of your life.
• Emotional damage: While emotional trauma is often more obscure and difficult to gauge the severity of, it can still affect your health in many of the same ways as physical trauma can. Emotional trauma is also a biological reaction to a stressful situation, and your body can undergo reactive changes in similar ways as if it were physical. The amygdala is the more primal portion of the brain, which controls the fight or flight reaction. The production of hormones, such as cortisol, are controlled in this region of the brain. Under states of stress, these hormones can affect you and eventually disrupt your overall physical and mental health. The source of this can be anything from bullying to gaslighting, mental or emotional abuse, or post-traumatic stress, to name a few.
• Pain and suffering: No one can truly estimate how something will affect another person. We are creatures that respond to the world around us through our senses. A traumatic event, whether physical or emotional, will affect people differently depending on their perception of events. The stress of any given personal injury can be detrimental to one’s health. This may present itself in the form of prolonged stress after surviving an industrial accident and suffering chronic pain. It could come from the emotional trauma of undergoing several surgeries and facing a long road to physical rehabilitation. It could also arise from other sources.
• Permanent disabilities: If you are injured, you may have become permanently disabled. This can be in any variety of ways, from reproductive health, trouble breathing, or losing motor function due to any severity of paralysis, etc. This will affect many things in your life, from relearning how to do basic tasks to your livelihood. Either way, your quality of life may have changed dramatically.
• Death: The ripple effects of death due to personal injury reach far and wide. Family members, the community, and loved ones who depended on the deceased must rebuild their lives after such a loss.

Effects of San Bernardino Personal Injuries

The repercussions of a personal injury can be numerous. Injuries can result in loss of time at work, which can eventually lead to loss of wages and may result in unemployment. Recovering from an injury can be an expensive process, saddling too many victims with enormous medical bill debt as they try to recover. Injuries may require multiple surgeries, physical therapy, mental health counseling, or other rehabilitative measures. Additionally, there may be costs associated with repairing damages or recovering losses from any destruction of property that may have resulted from the event. You may be struggling to rebuild your life.

Contacting our experienced San Bernardino attorneys can relieve some of the pressure associated with navigating through the legal system. This is especially true when you simultaneously try to rebuild your life and recover from your injuries.

Where Can San Bernardino Personal Injuries Happen?

The short answer to this is just about anywhere, as we are physical creatures that exist in a hostile world. Almost nowhere is truly safe when it comes to injury, and that, unfortunately, includes even the San Bernardino community.

Here are some examples of how injuries can occur:

• Workplace: Since the Industrial Revolution, laws have been put in place to ensure the health and safety of employees. With regulatory offices such as OSHA overseeing safety accommodations, and Workers Compensation Insurance safeguarding the livelihood of employees who may be injured on the job, accidents still happen. When they do, it may be due to negligence in the workplace and your employer may be held accountable for these lapses in providing a safe work environment. Workplace accidents may be minor or extremely serious, depending on your line of work. Either way, if you have been injured in the workplace, you may seek compensation accordingly.
• Leisure: From an afternoon at the park playing flag football or diving into the local swimming pool, having fun can quickly go south. Sports and recreation are the sources of many injuries. Whether it is mountain biking single track trails, sea kayaking, a game of softball, or any other recreational activity imaginable, you might find yourself injured in the pursuit of having a good time. Someone may be liable for your injury. If so, you could seek compensation for your recovery.
• Home accidents: They say that a significant amount of accidents take place at home. But, these kinds of accidents are also just as likely to happen in someone else’s home, especially if care has not been taken to warn you of hazards you are likely to encounter there. Slip and fall cases, accidental poisonings, drownings, loose railing, broken sidewalks, and electrocutions are just some of the countless ways you can be injured in a home.
• Businesses and accessibility: Businesses have a responsibility to the safety of their customers, and this is not limited to provisions set up by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Appropriate accessibility options can include handrails in bathroom stalls, automated doors, wheelchair ramps, and clearly marked disability access points. Non-compliance means that businesses may be held liable for resulting injuries, as well as discriminatory practices resulting in mental/emotional injury.
• Slip and falls: These types of injuries are often very serious. In what they call an “acceleration/deceleration” injury, a body at rest is brought into motion very quickly and stopped even more violently by the ground. It often involves a slick surface. This impact has been known to break bones such as hips or wrists, split skulls, or even cause brain injuries such as concussions or intracranial bleeding. These can usually be prevented by making others aware of hazards that could clearly result in slip and fall accidents.
• Brain injuries: This field is breaking new ground every day, with analysis from sports injuries, car accidents, and even slip and fall cases resulting in surprisingly complex findings. Your brain is the most important part of your central nervous system, and special care and consideration must be taken into account whenever the brain is involved. A traumatic brain injury may result in immediate physical dysfunction, or present itself years later.
• Auto/truck/motorcycle/vehicle injuries: When you are traveling at high speeds, you are demonstrating Newton’s Laws of motion. Since force equals mass times acceleration, this means that the force of the impact in or around a vehicle will typically be much greater than an injury without one. From broken bones, ruined organs, paralysis, permanent disabilities, and traumatic brain injuries, getting hurt in a vehicle accident is usually avoidable unless someone is at fault.
• Animal attacks: Even if an animal attacked you without the instruction of their owner, their owner may be deemed responsible for failing to keep their animal contained to prevent anyone from being hurt by it. Animal attacks can do a lot of damage. Dog bites, horse tramplings and kicks, or other preventable animal attacks can require a lot of medical attention and result in pain and suffering. The owner of that animal may owe you compensation.
• Daycare centers/nursing homes: Poor policies, accommodations, or insufficient background checks on staff can put the most vulnerable people in our lives in danger. If your child or elders are injured while under the care of a San Bernardino-located facility such as this, they may be held accountable.
• Mental abuse: Just because the bruises do not show, mental abuse is no less detrimental to your health and safety than a physical attack. Bullying, harassment, threats, menacing, and other “non-violent” attacks can lead to undue stress and may manifest themselves in very physical ways. Victims of mental abuse typically have to recover from heartbreaking and life-changing events, causing severe pain and suffering.
• Train accidents

Insurance Companies

Your case may result in an insurance company low-balling you for compensation. Some of these companies may do whatever they can to reduce their losses, even though the very reason people pay money to insurance companies is to receive compensation if tragedy strikes. A skilled attorney may help you navigate the negotiation process and advise you on how to proceed when dealing with insurance companies.

Private Individuals

Private individuals may be held accountable for their actions, resulting from either intended violence or accidental injury. Even if a case has gone to court with criminal charges pressed, you may still seek compensation in a civil court case. If the injury was accidental, you may also have to go after a person for compensation if they do not have insurance.

Negligence

Many injuries can be avoided if the right precautions have been taken and sufficient warnings are put into place. Failure to do so means that the cause of injury may be deemed negligent. The result of negligence is no different than a direct assault: someone has been hurt when the injury could have been prevented. Now, that injured person is left with trying to put the pieces of their life back together.

What Can I Do?

The process may provide you with a few options. If you or someone you know has been hurt, gather as much evidence as you can. This might come in the form of police reports, hospital records, medical bills, photographs, eyewitness accounts, surveillance footage, or in other forms. Your attorney could take this evidence and present it to the court and opposing counsel in the form of discovery.

Once the suit is filed, the discovery provides both sides with information that can be weighed to establish a dialog between the parties. This is done in mediation/arbitration, which can lead to either a settlement for a cash amount outside of court, or a continuation of the court process in which a trial is set.

In a trial, a judge or jury will hear evidence provided by both parties to determine fault and a compensation amount. The potential drawback to this is that juries and judges are not always predictable in what they decide or how they interpret the information provided. You may actually have more personal control of what you can get in a settlement during negotiations. Your attorney could guide you in what they believe will yield the best results. This may be in a settlement or to move forward to trial, complete with expert witnesses and other evidence supporting your case.

Either way, hiring an experienced attorney is an advisable means of pursuing compensation for your injury. From the expense of damaged property and medical bills to compensation for rehabilitation and continuing pain and suffering throughout your recovery, an attorney could fight for you.

San Bernardino Personal Injury FAQ

As you go about your daily routine in and around San Bernardino, you encounter multiple scenarios that can lead to a serious injury. Most of the time, you navigate life’s hazards without harm. However, sometimes you run into bad luck, and end up hurt.

Californians who suffer a preventable injury as a result of someone else’s negligence, carelessness, or willfully harmful actions have the right to take legal action against that party seeking damages. Few of them, however, know much about the scope of those rights, or how to enforce them.

Below, we answer some frequently asked questions we receive about personal injury cases in San Bernardino. For answers to specific questions about legal rights related to an injury, illness, or other harm you or a loved one suffered, contact an experienced San Bernardino personal injury lawyer at Gomez Trial Attorneys today.

What kinds of cases do your San Bernardino personal injury lawyers handle?

As their title suggests, personal injury lawyers represent San Bernardino residents, workers, and visitors in legal actions seeking compensation for physical and emotional injuries caused by someone else’s wrongful decisions or actions.

Harm can come to someone in countless ways, and a full-service personal injury law firm will typically handle all of them. However, the bulk of injuries that individuals suffer in San Bernardino arise from a relatively small number of scenarios.

These are:

• Car accidents;
• Taxi accidents 
• Truck accidents;
• Drunk driving accidents;
• Motorcycle accidents;
• Bicycle and pedestrian accidents;
• Premises liability/slip-and-fall accidents;
• Injuries caused by defective products;
• Nursing home negligence and abuse; and

Again, however, this is only a partial list of the limitless number of ways a person can suffer harm because of someone else’s unreasonably dangerous conduct. No matter how someone suffers an injury in San Bernardino, an experienced personal injury lawyer can usually help.

What injuries are typically associated with San Bernardino personal injury lawsuits?

The injuries San Bernardino residents, workers, and visitors might suffer also cover a wide range of harms.

Some common injuries for which lawyers help victims recover compensation include:

• Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs);
• Spinal cord injuries (SCIs);
• Childbirth injuries;
• Neck and back injuries;
• Severe orthopedic injuries;
• Burns;
• Amputations and crushed limbs;
• Illnesses caused by toxic exposure; and
• Illnesses and health complications caused by abuse or neglect.

Experienced San Bernardino personal injury attorneys who have years of law practice under their belt draw upon a wealth of knowledge about the diverse kinds of injuries their clients can suffer. In hiring an attorney, ask about the attorney’s familiarity with the particular injury you or a loved one suffered.

How severe do my injuries need to be to file a San Bernardino personal injury claim?

When it comes to your basic legal rights, the severity of your injury does not matter. No individual, company, organization, or government agency has the right to injure you or a loved one through carelessness, recklessness, or willfully harmful actions. You have the right to hold anyone who causes that kind of harm legally and financially accountable.

For that reason, we encourage anyone who has suffered harm through someone else’s wrongful decisions or actions to contact an experienced San Bernardino personal injury lawyer for a free consultation. Never simply assume that your injury is too minor to matter. All injuries matter, and it may surprise you to learn that an injury has caused you more harm than you first thought.

How much time do I have to take legal action in San Bernardino after an injury?

California’s statute of limitations sets a two-year deadline for filing a personal injury claim, in most cases. That means that you generally have two years from the date of your injury to take legal action seeking compensation from the party who caused you harm. If you miss that deadline, then you risk losing your legal rights to compensation.

In some cases, the law may expand or shrink those time limits. For example, sometimes victims do not know about their injury or illness right away. Instead, it takes a long time for symptoms to emerge, such as in some cases of exposure to toxic substances. The law may give those victims two years from the date they discovered, or reasonably could have discovered, their injury, to make a claim.

To protect yourself against losing your rights by missing a deadline, consult with an experienced San Bernardino personal injury attorney as soon as possible you suffer, or learn about, your injury.

Can I afford to hire your San Bernardino personal injury attorneys?

Yes. Our personal injury law firm offers free case reviews or consultations for potential clients. These meetings provide an opportunity for you to tell your story to a lawyer and learn about the best way to proceed for your individual circumstances. They also serve as a chance for you to learn about the attorney and firm, so that you can decide if we’re the right professionals to represent you in your personal injury claim.

Many San Bernardino personal injury victims face significant financial challenges in the aftermath of a severe injury. Many cannot work or have missed a significant amount of time from their jobs, and have amassed piles of bills for medical costs.

For that reason, personal injury lawyers typically take cases for injured clients on a contingency fee basis. This means the lawyer takes the case in exchange for receiving a cut of any of the money the lawyer succeeds in recovering on the client’s behalf. The client does not pay money upfront, and does not get charged by the hour or task.

Thanks to contingent fee arrangements, anyone in San Bernardino who suffers a personal injury can afford a top-notch lawyer.

Who is responsible for paying my medical bills after a San Bernardino personal injury?

Fear they can’t pay huge mountains of medical bills motivates many of our clients to seek our help.

The law makes you responsible for paying your medical bills after an injury even if someone else’s bad decisions or dangerous actions caused them. It’s up to you to find the money to pay for them.

Many people carry health insurance and other types of coverage to pay for unexpected medical expenses. However, even insurance does not always cover all costs associated with a San Bernardino personal injury.

An experienced San Bernardino personal injury lawyer works to secure money from at-fault parties to help you pay the bills that your insurance (if you have it) does not cover. The process of taking legal action for damages can take some time, however, so a lawyer can often also help you negotiate with your medical providers to postpone payment of your bills until your claim is settled or resolved.

Speak with an experienced San Bernardino personal injury lawyer today if you worry about paying large medical bills from an injury or illness caused by someone else.

Do I have to go to court for my San Bernardino personal injury claim?

It’s possible, but do not let a fear of going to court stop you from speaking with a skilled San Bernardino personal injury lawyer today.

The vast majority of personal injury cases do not end up in a courtroom. Instead, lawyers and representatives of the parties most often negotiate a settlement of the injured person’s claims on their own or with the help of a mediator.

That said, some cases need to head to court to achieve a fair and just outcome. For that reason, San Bernardino personal injury victims should always hire a lawyer who has a strong reputation as a skilled trial lawyer with a demonstrated track record of results in and out of the courtroom. By hiring a top-notch trial attorney, injured San Bernardino residents, workers, and visitors give themselves the widest range of options for achieving the best possible financial outcomes for their situations.

Should I take a settlement offer from an insurance company?

Not without consulting with a skilled San Bernardino personal injury lawyer first.

Insurance companies are not looking out for your best interests when they offer you a settlement, even if you are their policyholder. Instead, they focus on their bottom line by doing what they can to minimize their financial exposure to your injuries and losses. This is especially true of insurance companies who sold insurance to a party who caused your injuries.

A settlement offer from an insurance company always comes with strings attached; namely, that you must waive your rights to sue for the injuries you suffered. That makes insurance settlements a one-shot-deal. There are no do-overs. If the amount of money you accept as a settlement turns out to fall short of the sum you need to pay your bills, you cannot reopen your claims to get more.

An experienced San Bernardino personal injury lawyer can work with you to evaluate the full scope of the injuries and losses you have suffered, and to translate that harm into dollars-and-cents. Then, the attorney can negotiate on your behalf with an insurance company, to make sure that any settlement offer the company puts on the table represents fair compensation for your claim.

Ultimately, you get to decide whether to accept or reject a settlement from an insurance company. However, the advice and efforts of a skilled attorney often make the difference between a settlement that leaves you empty-handed down the road, and one that pays you the full value of your claim.

I suffered injuries at work. Can I sue my employer?

In most cases, that’s not necessary. Employers in California and throughout the United States are required to purchase workers’ compensation insurance to cover their employees against the costs of work-related injuries and illnesses.

Employees who get hurt or sick on the job can file a workers’ compensation claim for benefits that pay for their medical costs and replace some of their lost wages. The insurance company must pay these benefits, in most cases, regardless of who caused the worker’s injury.

Still, workers may have the right to recover damages against someone other than their employer or a co-worker. For example, a construction worker injured in an accident on a job site might have grounds to sue the property owner or the manufacturer of construction equipment that malfunctioned.

Skilled San Bernardino personal injury attorneys can represent workers in filing workers’ compensation claims, appealing claims that an insurance company denies, and taking legal action against third parties for damages.

How much money could I get from a settlement or jury award in my San Bernardino personal injury claim?

It depends on the specific facts and circumstances of your claim. And, of course, you must always remember that there are no guarantees of receiving money through a legal claim, which is why it is always important to hire a skilled, experienced San Bernardino personal injury trial attorney who gives you the best possible chance of succeeding in your claim.

Generally speaking, the damages a San Bernardino personal injury victim can seek to recover in a legal action consist of compensation for:

• Medical expenses related to a personal injury, including the cost of emergency care, hospitalization, surgeries, long-term care, therapy, doctor visits, and medication;

• Non-medical expenses the victim has because of the injury, such as added costs of help with childcare or transportation;

• Lost wages, past and future, owing to the injury, such as when a victim misses work or cannot return to work because of a disability;

• Pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life caused by the injury; and
• In some cases, exemplary (or punitive) damages that punish the party at fault for extreme or outrageous conduct.

The severity of a person’s injury and the impact the injury has on the person’s life largely dictate the amount of money that falls into each of these categories.

Also, the amount of money you have a legal right to receive for a San Bernardino personal injury can differ from the amount of money you have a realistic expectation of actually recovering. The strength of your case and the ability of the at-fault party to pay damages to you can affect the outcome of a claim.

Hiring a skilled San Bernardino personal injury lawyer to handle your claim helps to minimize these limitations. An experienced trial attorney has the know-how and resources to build the strongest possible case for your situation, and to locate as many sources of payment for you as possible.

Contact our skilled, experienced San Bernardino personal injury lawyers today for a free consultation about your personal injury claim.

Contact Our San Bernardino Personal Injury Attorneys Today

Personal Injury Lawyer, John Gomez

This sometimes lengthy process can drain you emotionally. Gomez Trial Attorneys can help expedite the process and increase your odds of getting the compensation you deserve for your personal injury. When John Gomez started this firm, he was determined to put together a team of trial attorneys who were a force to be reckoned with, to fight for ordinary people facing uphill battles. We pursue a successful result in every case, and we are not afraid to fight for the rights of our clients. You did not ask to be injured. You should not have to pay for treating those injuries.

Gomez Trial Attorneys is here to take on San Bernardino personal injury cases so victims can put their lives back together. We are dedicated to our clients and love what we do. If you were injured in the San Bernardino area, contact us or call us at (619) 237-3490 today to see what Gomez Trial Attorneys can do for you. Injured in an accident? Get a real trial lawyer. Get Gomez.

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