The spine plays an immensely important role in your overall health and quality of life. A spinal injury can lead to a wide array of problems, including:
- Paralysis.
- Intense pain, including chronic pain.
- Problems with movement and sensation.
- Disrupted functioning of various organs, including the bowels and bladder.
- Diminished sexual functioning.
- Poor mental health.
Given the great costs of a spinal injury, it’s important to speak to a skilled and compassionate St. Paul attorney in the aftermath. A spinal injury can arise from a number of situations, and you need to be able to fight for fair compensation for your expenses.
What Can Cause a Spinal Injury?
Motor Vehicle Accidents
Research on the cause of spinal cord injuries shows that car accidents are a leading cause of spinal cord injuries among people in the US, and are the chief cause for people ages 45 and younger. In many cases, an accident is the result of a driver’s negligent or reckless behavior. Examples include:
- Distracted driving, which injures over 1,000 people every day in the US.
- Speeding, which can lead to more high-impact accidents that result in injuries of greater severity.
- Impaired driving, which in one year alone led to injuries for over 2,300 people in Minnesota.
If your spinal cord injury resulted from a motor vehicle accident, it’s important to work with an attorney experienced with personal injury and vehicular accident cases.
Falling
Research on spinal cord injuries connected to falling has documented the variety of ways these falls can occur. For people 61 or older, the leading cause of spinal injuries from falls involves same-level tripping, slipping, or stumbling. Younger people are more vulnerable to spinal injuries after a fall from a building, usually in connection to their job.
An accident involving a fall may have been preventable. Different types of negligence can lead to falls, including:
- Inadequate safety protocols and training at a workplace, such as a construction site. A workplace may also fail to follow existing protocols.
- Poor lighting in stairwells or other areas.
- Broken or missing stairs, damaged pavement, and similar hazards.
- No signage indicating a wet floor.
- Faulty ladders or other defective equipment.
- Deteriorated playground equipment or a playground that’s been unsafely constructed.
- Improper care from medical providers, leading to falls from hospital beds, falls during patient transfers, and similar accidents.
- Ice that wasn’t cleared away within a reasonable time frame.
Sports and Recreation
Especially for activities such as football, hockey, skiing, cheerleading, wrestling, and gymnastics, spinal injuries are a risk. Diving can also lead to a spine injury, especially when people dive into shallow water.
An injury may have been caused, or exacerbated by, negligent actions on the part of other people. For example, a coach or another responsibility party may have neglected to summon medical help quickly enough, leading to worse injury outcomes. At a swimming pool, there may have been a lack of adequate signage about depth.
Violence
Some spine injuries result from beatings, stabbings, or gunshot wounds. Gunshot wounds may also be inflicted unintentionally, such as when a firearm goes off and accidentally hits someone. In the US between 2010 and 2012, there was an annual average of over 11,500nonfatal firearm injuries caused unintentionally.
Even if no one intended to hurt you, negligence may have played a role in your spinal injury. For example, a gun owner may not have handled a firearm with the proper precautions or kept it stored safely.
Receiving Legal Assistance From a Reputable St. Paul Attorney
Spinal injuries can have a devastating impact on your health and other aspects of your life. They may also occur simultaneously with other injuries, such as damage to your brain, internal bleeding, or hip fractures and other broken bones.
Your attorney will help you pursue every possible avenue of compensation to help you cover medical bills, loss of income, the cost of wheelchairs and other assistive devices, and other costs arising from changes to your life.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for experienced, highly skilled, and dedicated legal assistance. You can count on us to devote ourselves fully to your case and make it as easy as possible for you to work with us and benefit from our services.