Personal Injuries
When you or a family member suffers injury through the careless acts of another person or business entity, the law gives you the right to pursue damages. At The Hershewe Law Firm, our personal injury attorneys have decades of experience in bringing personal injury suits and winning millions in compensations for our clients in settlements and verdicts.
What Is "Personal Injury"?
Every day, people are injured in accidents. “Personal Injury” can include any type of injury or accident that is caused by the preventable carelessness or malicious intent of another person or a business.
If you have been injured, the damages can be catastrophic, including physical pain and debilitation that prevents you from working. The injury can put you into a financial situation where you cannot pay bills. The injury puts a burden and strain on your family to care for you, to do household chores you cannot perform, and to earn extra income to make up for what you have lost and to help pay outstanding medical bills.
I Think I Have A Personal Injury Case. What Do I Do Next?
First, seek medical care. After any type of accident, or if you are experiencing irregular physical symptoms after taking medication, or if you are experiencing symptoms related to toxic exposure, call 911 for an emergency or schedule an appointment with your family doctor for a check-up. Provide your doctor with details about the accident, medication, or exposure, so that she may better assess your symptoms.
Second, make sure you preserve all the evidence. Keep any and all paperwork related to your injury. Keep any letters sent to you by insurance companies and keep a copy of any letter or notice you send to a business advising them of your injury. If possible, keep any packaging, inserts, and parts of any dangerous product or contaminated food. Keep all medication bottles and remaining medication. Take pictures of the accident scene or any item involved in the accident. Get the names, phone numbers, and addresses of any witnesses, and get a statement of what they saw if you are able.
Third, make an appointment with a personal injury attorney. The time limits to bring some of these claims can be as short as ninety days from the injury. Do not delay in getting legal advice for your personal injury lawsuit because you may be waiving your right to recover anything for your injuries by waiting.
The Personal Injury lawyers at The Hershewe Law Firm offer a free consultation. At no cost to you, you can sit down with an attorney, explain the facts of your potential claim to them, and they will begin an initial investigation of your claim, and explain your rights.
Our team of personal injury attorneys can help make sure that the necessary actions are taken to protect your rights, and we can give you the legal advice you need while on your path to recovery. Our firm’s accident lawyers handle all types of personal injury and negligence cases, including automobile injuries, school injuries or injury on another person’s property, birth injuries to mother or baby, defective products or defective medication, manufacturing defects and design defects, medication errors or pharmacy errors, equipment malfunction, firework injury, aviation accidents or plane crash injury and wrongful death, railroad accidents and bus injuries, abuse and neglect of the elderly, assault and battery, dog attacks, slip and fall accidents, toxic or chemical exposure, as well as other general negligence.
If you have been injured and need the advice of an experienced personal injury lawyer, contact The Hershewe Law Firm today for your free consultation.
Types of Personal Injury Cases
Product Liability Personal Injury
“Product Liability” is the responsibility of a manufacturer and distributor to ensure they are delivering a safe product to consumers. When the manufacturer cuts corners and a distributor then sells that defective product to a consumer, both can be held responsible for any injuries that happen.
Product Liability cases include defects in any type of manufactured goods, like defective cars or defective parts inside of a car; defective equipment, like lawnmowers, weed eaters, saws, tractors, or factory machinery; defective medical devices, like interstim implants, hip implants, or knee replacement implants. Any product sold to a consumer without the proper warnings or without proper safety precautions that causes harm to that consumer is a defective product.
If you or a family member has been injured by a defective product, save all packaging and inserts for the product, as well as the product itself, and search for the product on the list of current recalls to see if others have been experiencing the same defect. Contact us today to make an appointment for a free consultation with our experienced product liability attorneys. We can evaluate your case and help you decide what to do next.
Medication Personal Injury
Pharmaceutical Companies are constantly in a race to produce the next miracle drug that cures anything from diabetes to cancer to the obesity epidemic. Occasionally, those companies ignore warning signs of dangerous side effects and push their drugs through to the production stage.
If you have been injured as a result of taking a prescription drug that later lost its FDA approval or has been recalled, please contact one of our experienced attorneys today at for a free consultation. We can help you get started by evaluating your claim, explaining your rights, and advising you about the recovery options available for that particular drug.
A few of the drugs we are currently investigating include: Avandia, Avastin, Pradaxa, Yaz, and a variety of others. Find more information about recalled and bad drugs.
Mass Transit Personal Injury
A “common carrier” is the term for the provider of service that transports people. Bus, shuttle, train, and airplane operators owe special duties to the passengers they escort. When a passenger is injured or killed in a plane crash, a bus accident, or when a train derails, both the operator and the company running the common carrier may be liable for injuries to those passengers and other harm to the family of the passenger in the case of wrongful death.
If you or a family member has been injured by a common carrier, contact The Hershewe Law Firm today for a case review and investigation.
Premises Liability Personal Injury
“Premises Liability” happens when the owner of a piece of property fails to make that property safe for people who are invited onto that property. When someone is injured because the property is dangerous, the landowner or person with control of the property can be responsible.
The injury may occur on a hotel or other business’s property, in a neighbor’s house, on a public sidewalk or in a public park, or in a common area of your apartment complex. Whether the landowner or another person is responsible will depend on whether the law classifies you as an invitee, a trespasser, or licensee. It will also depend on whether the dangerous condition was a natural or man-made condition, if it was open and obvious to the general public, along with a host of other factors. Swimming pools and trampolines are common causes of injury at someone else’s house.
If you have been injured on someone else’s property, please call and make an appointment with our attorneys today. The Hershewe Law Firm has lawyers experienced in premises liability cases who will be able to break down the facts of your case for you and advise you on whether or not you should proceed with a lawsuit.
Animals Personal Injury
People and animals interact all the time. Sometimes, those meetings do not go as planned – and someone gets hurt. Pets like dogs and cats can cause Personal Injury by biting or scratching a guest on the property. The owner may be liable for those injuries, especially if he or she has reason to know that the dog has a “propensity for violence,” i.e., if the dog has been violent toward other people or animals in the past. The owner may not be liable if the injured person was trespassing in the yard or the house where the animal was staying.
The owner of a wild or exotic animal has an “absolute duty” to keep his property safe to people coming onto his property at his invitation or for a specific purpose. The “absolute duty” means the owner will be responsible if someone is hurt by the wild animal whether or not the owner did something irresponsible, like leaving the cage open.
The owner of an animal can also be responsible for damage caused by his animal if that animal trespasses on another person’s property and injures someone, destroys livestock, or destroys property.
Owners of livestock have a duty to keep their livestock fenced and off roads and highways. When a horse or cow gets loose and wanders onto the highway, the owner of the animal should be responsible for damages when a car strikes the animal or swerves to miss the animal and strikes another vehicle.
Owners of livestock may also be liable for injuries to people riding their horses or walking in and around those horses. Whether the owner is responsible depends on each unique set of facts, including the relationship of the owner to the rider, the relative experience of the rider, the location of the horse, and whether the owner did something irresponsible with the horse.
Injuries caused by animals fall into many different categories and require individualized attention. If you or a loved one has been injured by an animal owned by someone else, please contact us today to set up your free consultation.
Toxic Exposure Personal Injury
When large corporations manufacture their products, occasionally they allow large quantities of harmful chemicals to leech into the ground water, the soil nearby, or the air. Other times, employees may be exposed to toxic chemicals as a part of their job duties. In both of these situations, people can be injured or killed by exposure to harmful chemicals, like chlorine gasses, lead, arsenic, pesticides and herbicides, chemical fertilizers, and hormones.
If you suspect that a large corporation or manufacturing plant has been polluting the area around your home or work and you are suffering physical symptoms as a result of that pollution, you could have a claim against that corporation or plant for toxic exposure.
The Hershewe Law Firm has a long history of fighting large corporations who have decided to contaminate our communities and harm the people living nearby. Contact us today for a free consultation about your claim and begin an investigation into the source of the contamination