Child Injury Lawyer Orange County

Has Your Child Been Injured? Hire a Child Injury Attorney Today

As a parent, your child’s health, safety, and well-being are your top priorities. When you entrust someone else with their care, they should feel the same way. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Every day, children are injured because of the negligence of other people. It’s up to their parents or legal guardians to hold those parties responsible, and the first step in doing so is retaining an experienced personal injury law firm.

If your child has been injured because of a defective product, dangerous playground equipment, a dog bite, or some other accident in which someone else is at fault, it’s crucial to line up legal representation right away; in Southern California, Kubota & Craig law firm is here to help.

Act Quickly to Protect Your Child’s Rights

When it comes to injury cases involving children, time is of the essence. Statutes of limitations apply in many cases. More crucially, the more time that’s passed, the harder it is to gather witness statements and other evidence. In the aftermath of an accident involving the most important person in your life, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. However, to protect your child’s rights and hold the negligible party accountable, it’s vital to act immediately by hiring a personal injury lawyer.

Injuries Involving Children

Non-fatal causes of injuries to children vary widely. Here’s some information about the most common ones:

• More than 14 million children are injured in the U.S. per year.
• 6,600 children per year die from their injuries.
• Children between the ages of 15 months and 17 months are most likely to be injured.
• Approximately 2.8 million children per year are injured in slip-and-fall accidents.
• Motor vehicle accidents are the top cause of injuries for children between the ages of 15 and 19 years.
• Every hour, 150 kids between the ages of birth and 19 years are treated in ERs for car accident injuries.
• Half of all children sent to the ER for drowning accidents are hospitalized, and brain damage renders many permanently disabled.
• Approximately 1,300 kids per day are treated for non-fatal assault injuries.

Common Types of Child Injuries

Some of the most common scenarios involving injuries to children include the following:

• animal attacks, including dog bites
• burns
• dangerous toys
• defective products
• poisoning
• car accidents
• choking
• swimming pool accidents
• birth injuries
• sports injuries
• violence

Please note that when children are injured in the above scenarios, it’s almost always because the person responsible for them breached their duty of care.

Injuries at School

Most children spend significant amounts of time at school or daycare, where parents expect the people in charge to supervise and otherwise care for them properly. Sadly, children are often seriously injured at school. What makes matters worse is that public schools are government entities, and strict protocols must be followed when filing personal injury lawsuits against them. Therefore, it’s especially critical to enlist qualified legal help as soon as possible when your child is injured at school.

Examples of common injuries to children at school include the following:

• slip-and-fall accidents
• bullying and assault
• school bus accidents
• faulty playground equipment
• sports accidents
• food poisoning

Negligence and Duty of Care

With any valid personal injury claim, you must establish that negligence occurred. When children are injured, the negligent parties are usually the very people charged with caring for them. Upon assuming responsibility for a minor child, an adult also assumes a duty of care to that child under the law.

Examples of negligent parties in injury cases involving children include the following:

• the child’s own parent or parents
• other children’s parents
• school or daycare personnel
• babysitters
• medical professionals
• toy manufacturers

What Does a Successful Personal Injury Claim Need to Prove?

Even though you know in your heart that your child was injured because of someone else’s negligence and that they owe you compensation, you have to prove certain things for your personal injury claim to succeed.

First, you must show that the injured party didn’t give consent for the action that caused their injury.

Second, contributory or comparative negligence must be established, which means that to the extent that a plaintiff is responsible for negligence, the damages paid are reduced by a similar degree.

Finally, no damages are allowed if the injured party was involved in some type of illegal activity.

Since personal injury cases are so complicated, it’s essential to enlist a qualified law firm’s help right away.

You and Your Child’s Rights in Personal Injury Cases

Personal injury law assumes that minors don’t possess the same judgment as adults. However, children are entitled to compensation for certain types of damages, including emotional distress, pain and suffering, permanent injury, and disability. As the parent, you have the right to negotiate on behalf of your injured child and to hire an attorney to do so. You also have a separate right to compensation for medical bills you have incurred on behalf of the child.

Please note that a child’s claim can’t be settled without special approval from a judge in some states, further complicating matters.

Our Lawyers are Here for You and Your Child

As a parent, your first instinct is to protect your child from harm. As soon as your child has been stabilized after being injured, however, it’s important to hire a qualified personal injury law firm. In Southern California, Kubota & Craig law firm can help; here’s how:

• Consult with Medical Experts – Our team will consult with medical experts to ascertain the nature and extent of your child’s injuries as well as the costs associated with them.
• Accident Reconstruction – We work with professionals across many fields to reconstruct accidents involving children, allowing us to demonstrate what happened and why negligence occurred.
• Accident Scene Investigation – Our law firm investigates child accident scenes thoroughly, ensuring that every piece of evidence is collected and documented.
• Evidence Gathering – In addition to gathering evidence from the scene of the accident, our attorneys collect witness statements, documentation, and other types of evidence to make your personal injury case as strong as possible.
• Communicate with Insurance Companies – Finally, it’s important to remember that insurance companies do everything they can to avoid paying claims. Never deal directly with an insurance company in the aftermath of an accident in which a child has been injured. Instead, leave that to the professionals and Kubota & Craig law firm.

Hire a Child Injury Lawyer Today to Hold Responsible Parties Accountable

Like any caring parent, you are willing to do whatever it takes to protect your child. When someone else’s negligence causes harm to your child, they must be held responsible – not just so you and your child can be compensated, but so they don’t continue doing the same thing to others.

Kubota & Craig law firm understands the intricacies of personal injury law – especially when it involves minors – so we are good advocates to have by your side during such trying times. Our lawyers are well-versed regarding insurance companies, school districts, government agencies, and other bureaucracies. They know how to apply the pressure it takes to get the most favorable settlements for our clients. If your child has been injured in Southern California, contact Kubota & Craig today.