Personal Injury / Wrongful Death
When tragedy strikes, and you or a loved one experience a personal injury, or a loved one is killed due to another’s wrongdoing (known in the law as wrongful death), you need counsel experienced in these important areas of the law.
Personal injuries most often arise out of another person’s or company’s negligence. We all owe each other a duty of reasonable care under the circumstances and a duty to protect others from injury or death. Negligence occurs when someone breaches or violates that duty of reasonable care, and the breach causes another person to suffer personal or economic injuries, or death.
Personal injury can also occur when a company manufactures or distributes for sale a product (such as a tire, a drug, or a machine) that has a defect that makes it unreasonably dangerous even when it is used for its intended purpose. When such defective products cause injuries or death, the victim of the defective product or the survivors of the person killed by the defective product may have a claim for product liability, and may also have claims for breach of express or implied warranties. (Product manufacturers or distributors often provide written warranties, or promises, about a product’s characteristics or performance or durability. These are express warranties. In addition, the legal system has concluded that some warranties are so important that they are inferred at law even if the manufacturer or distributor does not put them in writing. These are implied warranties.)
At Choquette & Simons LLP, we have substantial experience representing individuals and families injured by the wrongdoing of others, whether through negligence, wrongful death, product liability, or breach of warranty. Our experience includes auto collisions and rollovers, auto-pedestrian impacts, slip-and-fall injuries, automobile defects, and medical and legal malpractice. We have assisted individuals who have suffered: neck, back, and spinal injuries; broken bones; closed head and traumatic brain injuries; other neurological injuries; facial injuries; various kinds of sensory losses; scarring and disfigurement; lost past and future earnings and business profits; and mental or psychological injuries such as pain and suffering, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (or “PTSD”).
While we can and do represent individuals injured by others on an hourly fee basis, we most often represent such individuals or their survivors on a contingency fee basis. In a contingency fee case, the lawyer gets paid a fee if she or he helps the client recover a payment of damages. The lawyer receives a percentage of the total damages recovered (also known as the “gross recovery”).
We also make arrangements for the payment of costs incurred during a
case - for things like court filing fees, exhibit preparation, and
depositions. Sometimes, our clients are able to pay these costs
themselves. Sometimes our clients and we share in paying for costs, and
then our client pays us back for those costs we have advanced out of the
damages recovered. And sometimes we advance all of the costs incurred,
and then our client pays us back for all of those costs out of the
damages recovered.
We will be happy to discuss attorney fee and cost arrangements with you before your case begins, so you will understand these arrangements and can arrive at one that will work for your circumstances.
To contact us about a personal injury, wrongful death, product liability, or breach of warranty claim, click here.
