Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Los Angeles Burn Injury Lawyers Discuss Preventing Burn Injuries in Children

Published on May 28, 2009 in Personal Injury. 0 Comments

There are many ways burn injuries can occur in Los Angeles and other California cities and counties. In this article, Los Angeles injury lawyers discus preventing burn injuries in children. To begin with, burns caused by fire, friction and electrical sparks not only char the skin, they also damage the dermis and epidermis and if an electrical related burn, can even cause nerve and brain damage. This problem is compounded when a small child suffers a burn injury.

The Steps To Take in Avoiding Burns In Children

* You should make sure either you or your landlord has provided smoke detectors in all rooms and floors of your dwelling, especially where you and your child sleeps. Make sure to follow manufacturer instructions and test these smoke detector gadgets at least one time every month. You will also need to put new batteries in the smoke detector gadgets at least once per year, assuming they are not electrically powered. Most manufacturers suggest the smoke alarms be replaced at least every 10 years or so. There are also ten-year lithium batteries and smoke alarms that are set up to use them if you want to go more maintenance free.

* Never ever leave your child by him or herself under any circumstances. This holds especially true when it comes to a kitchen with an oven, or a bathroom with hot water that could scald an infant or small child. This means even if your infant or baby is in the tub and you need to leave to answer the phone or what not you should take the child along with you till you can return to supervise.

* It goes without saying that flammable liquids like lighter fluid, lighters, matches, gas both natural and liquid, and other flammable material needs to be kept in a secure area and high enough so a child cannot reach it. Pyrotechnics like fireworks should always be kept out of reach of children in all events.

* Anyone with kids can prevent a burn deglove injury or serious scald by simply setting their water heater thermostats to one hundred and twenty (120) degrees Fahrenheit or less. There are also faucet and shower head gadgets that are equipped with anti-scald features.

* Always always keep hot liquids and hot food up and away from the edge of a table or counter and under no circumstances should carry a child when you are also carrying hot items.

* If you plan on cooking, use the burners on the stove located at the rear and make sure to turn the pot handles inwards so a child cannot grab them. Cover electrical outlets with safety gadgets and use cord cover gadgets to cover electrical cords so a child cannot bite into it and receive a shock and burn to his or her mouth. Obviously, if a cord is plugged into a hot device gadget like a George Foreman Grill for example, you need to prevent a child from grabbing it and pulling the hot device into his or her little body.

We hope you have enjoyed this article wherein Los Angeles burn injury lawyers discus preventing burn injuries in children. If you or someone you know has suffered a severe burn injury not the fault of your own, you should immediately contact experienced burn injury attorneys to see if you have a negligence claim to help you pay for the costs of surgery, medical care, pain and suffering, plastic surgery, skin grafts, and lifetime pain medication.

Since burn injuries can result in a wrongful death, you need to be prepared for the wore until the burn injury is stabilized.

Determining Liability With Industrial Accident Lawyers

Published on May 25, 2009 in Personal Injury. 0 Comments

Industrial accidents are covered by worker’s compensation laws. But in cases when the accident was due to design and manufacturing defects or negligence of another party aside from the employer, it can be a ground for pursuing a personal injury claim.

If you have been involved in an industrial accident, then your task is to prove that your injury resulted from negligence or prohibited action. Since industrial accidents are governed by worker’s compensation laws, the employer cannot be blamed if the accident is filed as a personal injury claim.

If you are involved in an industrial accident and believe that another party is to be blamed, you can file a personal injury claim. By doing so, it would provide an opportunity to recover financial losses, settle medical bills, or provide compensation to other victims as a result of other damages.

Laws surrounding industrial accidents can be a complicated. The regulations may vary from one state to another. Consulting a lawyer who is well-versed with industrial accidents may provide you with some helpful pointers in making decisions concerning your case.

Causes of Industrial Accidents There are various causes of industrial accidents as there are kinds of accidents. In its broadest sense, it may range from small cuts and bruises to huge disasters that have an impact on a large group of people. Mining, construction, transportation, and agricultural industries have the highest incidence of industrial accidents.

The causes of industrial accidents can be trimmed down into broad divisions: unsafe conditions and acts. The former consists of inadequate workspace lighting, too much noise, slippery or unprotected flooring, exposure to extreme temperature, unsafe working conditions when using machines, uneven structures, problems with electricity, defective machines, and others.

On the other hand, causes involving unsafe acts consist of actions which may bring about injury. This may be due to negligent acts of an employee. However, employers, organizations, product manufacturers can likewise be responsible for the causes of industrial accidents.

Preventing Industrial Accidents

In most instances, preventing industrial accidents delves on the security of the industrial site. For instance, when inspecting the construction site, contractors are accompanied by safety engineers who provide warnings to employees of possible danger areas.

For their part, workers need to comply with the safety standards set forth by their superiors to be able to ensure maximum industrial accident prevention. If contractors and subcontractors fail to adopt the safety measures and heed safety precautions on the construction site, then a third party lawsuit can be pursued against them. If the employee is at fault, they will only receive workers’ compensation.

Furthermore, industrial accidents will be prevented if the manufacturing companies will produce frequently used equipments such as scaffolding, motorized vehicles such as forklifts and tractors, gas pressure equipments, electric conductors, and heavy machinery. Preventing industrial accidents will force equipment and machinery producers to manufacture and maintain properly operating products.

In the end, when preventive measures fail and industrial accidents takes place, it is vital to establish the culprit in order to produce a just settlement. In all of these, industrial accident lawyers can help determine if there is a case to be filed.

To help you with industrial accidents and related issues, you can consult with our experienced accident lawyers by logging on to our official website and have your case evaluated.

Personal Injury Negotiating: The First Thing You Gotta Know

Published on May 21, 2009 in Law. 0 Comments

The first principle of personal injury negotiating is: ask for more than you expect to get.

To apply this correctly you need to know what your case is worth but that’s a whole other article.

Once you have a ball park idea of your case’s value multiply it by three for example. Use that as your starting point. I like to think of it as an “invitation to negotiate.”

Roger Dawson is one of the country’s top experts on negotiation. He is founder of the Power Negotiating Institute and the author of “Secrets of Power Negotiating.” The audio version of his book has sold over 548 thousand copies, is one of Nightingale-Conant’s top sellers and is one of the best selling business audio programs ever published.

If you read his book-which I highly recommend-you will find in Chapter 1, that his very first principle is “Ask for More Than You Expect to Get.”

Henry Kissinger put it like this: “Effectiveness at the conference table depends upon overstating one’s demands.

Why would you want to ask for more than you expect to get?

1) It allows room to negotiate. You can always come down but you can never-or almost never-go back up once you have named a number.

At a mediation recently we learned that the other side was still considering our position to be the last number we gave before we filed suit a year earlier. A lot more was known about her physical condition and it was a lot worse than we had thought before filing suit. Finding out that our demand was twice the pre-suit amount, the other side was ready to walk out.

It took some careful work by a very skilled mediator to get them to stay.

2) Their valuation might actually be higher than yours.

Though rare in my business it does happen occasionally that the other side puts a higher value on the case than you expect. Starting with demand number much higher than your valuation allows them to come in at a number higher than yours.

My law school classmate Mel Smith used to say “the first one to name a number loses.” Asking for more than you expect is a way of naming a number without naming a number.

3) It increases the perceived value of your case.

By asking for a lot you cause the other side to begin to see your case as valuable.

4) It sets the stage for settlement

Asking for more than you expect sets the stage for you to come down (to your true valuation) and the other side feels they have had a success and got a good bargain.

Robert Cialdini in “Influence-Science and Practice” describes this as “perceptual contrast.”

“There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another. Simply put, if the second item is fairly different from the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is.”

You have made your opening demand fairly different by asking for a lot more than you expect. This makes your case seem more valuable and also allows the other side to take a huge win from the fact that they were able to settle the case much lower than the opening number.

Downside

A downside of asking for more than you expect is that sometimes you won’t be taken seriously by your opponent. Your demand may be too far out of their conceptual ballpark. In that case they might make a very low offer in response or not make an offer at all.

The solution? Communication. Talk to them. Ask what is going on. Why aren’t they offering? Or, why are they offering so little? They’ll tell you and that will give you the clue to your next move.

Summary

Ask for more than you expect to get. You just might be surprised and at the very least you have set the stage for a successful resolution.

Common Spinal Cord Injuries in Car Accidents

Published on May 14, 2009 in Personal Injury. 0 Comments

Spinal cord injuries are typically very severe and often result from car accidents. In this article we explore the common spinal cord injuries in car accidents, because often they are very severe and require immediate medical attention if your or someone you love was involved in a major vehicular accident. In California cities such as Los Angeles, Santa Ana, or Newport Beach, hundreds of accident victims consult car accident lawyers due to spinal cord injury (“SCI”) typically caused by accidents involving trucks, big rigs, bicycle, or from recreational activities on motorcycle.

Spinal cord injuries are typically diagnosed by seeing which vertebrae of your spinal cord were injured or disrupted. Quadriplegia, aka Tetraplegia, means loss of all functions and control from the head down. Paraplegia occurs when an individual loses control and feeling from the waist down. The statistics provided by the National Spinal Cord Injury Association demonstrate the typical causes of SCI in the United States as follows:

• Forty four percent of all spinal cord injuries caused by car accidents;

• Twenty four percent of all spinal cord injuries caused by violence;

• Twenty two percent of all spinal cord injuries caused by slips and falls;

• Eight percent of all spinal cord injuries caused from sporting injuries;

• Two percent of SCI caused from various other activities.

Los Angeles, California is a Mecca for car accident claims. Los Angeles car accident attorneys report that most spinal trauma victims from car crash cases undergo the following types of back injury:

• Vehicular accidents from SUVs, and passenger vehicles often result in whiplash, to tetraplegia;

• Semi trucks cause spinal cord injuries such as paraplegia, but also result in wrongful death claims from jackknifeing of a semi trailer;

• Delivery vans often are speeding and this increases the risk of a disc bulge or disc burst fracture.

So what can a spinal cord injury attorney do for me?

Spinal cord injury (SCI) lawyers in Los Angeles, for example, are local to the courts and know the judges and courtroom staff better than an out of town law firm. Retaining attorneys who understand disc bulge claims, SCI and the related disc injuries coupled with nerve damage helps your attorney comprehend the trauma and horrible circumstances of your suffering. This helps your SCI lawyer negotiate your back injury claims with the insurance adjustor.

To complement the rehabilitation efforts of medical and health providers, spinal cord injury attorneys offer advice on special care and treatment, long-term care and other economic needs, as well as compassionate counsel and support to victims. Aside from medical and legal issues, spinal cord injury lawyers also deal with matters such as the necessity or appropriateness of certain treatment, who will pay for the care, and the consequences and needs of the injured person and the family.

Car accident attorneys who specialize in spinal injury can actually work with your doctor in order to help him or her document evidence, and locate the and document the a prognosis and diagnosis early on. This will eventually help you in determining the past, present and future economic loss associated with traumatic back damages. And you may need lifetime nursing and housing care, so this is another important reason to retain the right legal counsel to solicit your insurance claims for you and your family.

Common spinal cord injuries in car accidents require a team of accident scene investigators and accident reconstructionists, as well as an evaluation of evidence. A highly skilled SCI attorney will assist you to assess the accident claims and locating potential other sources of more immediate economic recovery like disability benefits, or victim of crime benefits, as an example. At the most, spinal cord injury attorneys help victims and their families cope with the grief and trauma of the accident.

Personal Injury Settlement Out of Court Or A Lengthy Legal Personal Injury Battle?

Published on May 6, 2009 in Personal Injury. 0 Comments

You have been figured in an accident caused by someone else’s negligence.  But after recuperating from the hospital and you stayed inside your house, you are sore and ready to put the accident behind you but you should wait on throwing out the idea of hiring a personal injury lawyer. That accident may have far lasting consequences on your body and wallet then you initially thought. The bruises will heal but what if there is permanent damage that limits your ability to perform work tasks? You may find that you do need personal injury litigation and perhaps, a personal injury settlement with the help of a personal injury lawyer.

There are times when an injury may take days or weeks to begin to affect your health and performance. There is little doubt that there will be sore muscles and bruising after an accident but what if the soreness does not leave and it begins to affect your ability to perform your job or your ability to go about with your business as you normally would do?  What if, for instance, have specifically lost an arm or both because of that accident? Who will find some means of income for your family, huh?  So, it’s really best that you should hire a personal injury lawyer to help you with a personal injury settlement.

A personal injury attorney knows that these conditions can arise. He or she can make sure that you are getting the medical attention you need and will make sure that everything is documented. If the other person was at fault for the accident, then his or her insurance company may want to give you a flat personal injury settlement. However, if your medical bills are higher than the amount his insurance company would like to settle for, then, prepare yourself to pay the remaining amount out from your own pocket and that’s aside from the loss of wages or income from your business because of the time that you need to take off from work or your daily business transactions. Personal injury and accident attorneys specialize in the laws surrounding personal injury due to negligence or auto accidents and they can decide if a personal injury settlement out of court is necessary or not.

You see, most accident victims pursue claims for the injuries and damages incurred from an accident. The negligent party would have to pay the damages to the victim which is supposed to alleviate their suffering. Usually, people involved in litigations similar to this would agree to have a personal injury settlement so that they would not be involved in lengthy proceedings that could take up much of their time and financial resources. But remember, if the insurance company of a person who will settle for the damages like hospital bills and so forth, they might settle for something lesser than what you think and you have to pay for the remaining balance, if ever there was one.

To conclude, it’s much better that you have to weigh the problem first and see if a personal injury settlement out of court is needed but if you think things can get worse for the rest of your life, and you know what that means, then, you do need the services of a personal injury lawyer.