Personal injury is a large field of legal practice. Since you can get injured in countless ways, there are many, many different types of personal injury cases that can be brought to trial. Some of these types of injuries immediately make sense, such as car accidents. But other types may surprise people, such as defective devices.

It is important for people to understand the range of this field as it helps them to realize when they could look to receive compensation. Since it is such a large topic, we’re going to break it down into three key components. The first is the many different kinds of accidents that could result in personal injury cases. The second category is focused on the medical field. The last section will cover those areas that the first two missed.

What Type of Accidents Does Personal Injury Cover in Mississippi?

There are a lot of different accidents covered by personal injury law. The different kinds of accidents include:

  • Car accidents
  • Truck accidents
  • Motorcycle accidents
  • Bicycle accidents
  • Pedestrian accidents
  • Boating accidents
  • Slip and fall accidents
  • Dog bites
  • And more

It is necessary to include “and more” because there are simply an endless number of ways that one person’s negligence can harm another person. But more on that in a moment.

Injuries from accidents that are common in personal injury cases include:

  • Skull fractures
  • Paralysis
  • Broken bones
  • Neck injuries
  • Back injuries
  • Sprains
  • Strains
  • Spinal cord injuries
  • Torn ligaments
  • Concussions
  • Contusions
  • Amputation
  • Bruises
  • Traumatic brain injuries
  • Organ failure
  • Loss of motor function
  • Life-threatening infections
  • Burns
  • Internal injuries
  • Cosmetic damages

Each of these injuries will come with bills for the medical care, which is a damage that you could hopefully recover through legal proceedings.

However, in order to win a personal injury case where there was an accident, you will need to prove that your injuries were caused by the accident and that the accident was caused by another party’s negligence, recklessness, or carelessness. If you are unable to prove this chain of causation then you won’t be awarded any damages.

What Kind of Medical Injuries Do Personal Injury Attorneys Assist With?

A large component of personal injury law deals with the medical world. Specifically, medical malpractice and defective medical devices or drugs. Medical malpractice legally functions very similarly to accident cases in that it must be shown that a medical practitioner’s negligent or careless actions caused you to suffer damages.

We say medical practitioners instead of doctors because it is important to note that there are many individuals in the medical industry that could cause you harm. They include roles as varied as:

  • Doctors
  • Surgeons
  • Dentists
  • Nurses
  • Anesthesiologists
  • Nursing home staff
  • Assisted-living home staff
  • Hospice staff
  • Physical therapists
  • Rehabilitation center staff
  • Emergency room staff
  • Doctor’s office receptionists
  • And any licensed medical practitioner

There are many ways to hurt somebody within the medical field and so it is expected that those who work in it will be conducting themselves appropriately and providing each patient with the proper attention and care.

Unfortunately, the medical world is often a very fast-paced one in which professionals’ attention is being pulled every which way and many have to function on very little sleep. This can result in accidents happening and mistakes being made. While understandable, it is also extremely dangerous because mistakes in the medical field can lead to devastating consequences.

Some common forms of medical malpractice include:

  • Injuries suffered during birth or defects in birth
  • Delays in treatment
  • Staff that is improperly trained or inexperienced
  • Failure to monitor a patient’s condition
  • Failure to diagnose a patient’s ailment
  • Prescriptions for the wrong medication
  • Prescriptions for the wrong dosage
  • Misinterpreting test results
  • Wrong diagnosis
  • Delayed diagnosis
  • Errors with applying anesthesia

The worst part of all this is that those who are hurt are typically those who are already going through hardships of their own. It’s rare that somebody shows up to see a medical practitioner when they’re already feeling fine. This happens of course and medical malpractice cases have even arisen out of these interactions but the vast majority of the victims of medical malpractice were already suffering beforehand.

Thankfully, there is a long list of potential damages that you can recover after suffering from medical malpractice. This includes things like medical bills and lost wages, as well as pain and suffering and loss of quality of life. These latter two are less concrete, it’s hard to put a number on our pain and suffering, but a personal injury attorney can help you determine what is a fair number to ask for as compensation for what you suffered.

What Other Types of Personal Injury Cases Are There?

There are a few other types of cases that fall under personal injury but are a little harder to slot into the other two categories.

One of these would be premises liability cases. These are personal injury cases that argue that the way a premise was maintained resulted in an accident. Slip and fall accidents are often premises liability cases. Rather than prove that a person’s actions caused an accident, you need to show that their inaction caused an accident.

Another type of personal injury case is defective products. If you buy a water gun that is supposed to shoot streams of water but instead the cheap materials cause any liquid put inside to become toxic then you’ve bought a defective product. With these, you need to show that either the design, the manufacturing process, or the labeling is at fault for the injuries you suffered.

Wrongful death cases are also a kind of personal injury case. These can occur from any type of personal injury we discussed above, but the difference here is that the victim has died due to their injuries and so another party (typically a family member) presses the lawsuit on their behalf.

When Do I Need a Personal Injury Attorney?

The best time to get a personal injury attorney is as close to when you were injured as possible. These cases all have strict time limits on them and so the more time your attorney has to investigate and build a case, the better your chances of winning will be.