Information on Specific Types of Injuries

Understanding Complex Medicine is Crucial to Effectively Presenting Your Case to a Jury or Insurance Carrier

Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC firmly believes that to provide the best representation for our clients, we must be familiar with the type of injury that they have sustained. After all, how else can a lawyer effectively represent an injured person if we cannot explain the mechanics, medical care, and resulting prognosis to a jury?

If you or a loved one suffered a catastrophic injury due to someone else's negligence, you are likely entitled to receive financial compensation from those responsible. Those at fault for your injuries are likely financially responsible for your medical costs, time away from work, the cost of rehabilitation and recovery, and non-economic damages including your pain, suffering, and mental anguish. When considering how to pursue a claim for compensation to protect your rights, it is important to know that the state's statute of limitations restricts the amount of time you have to file your case. If you delay your filing, you usually lose your rights to pursue any claim in the future.

Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC represents victims of personal injury and other types of professional negligence. Our law firm has successfully prosecuted cases for our clients who were injured by the negligent actions of others. Our attorneys are available to answer any legal questions on how to receive the monetary compensation you deserve if your injuries were a result of someone else's negligence, mistreatment, recklessness, or intentional act. Should you have additional questions, we invite you to contact our office for a free review of your legal rights.

Advocates for Your Unique Circumstance and Type of Injury

Under the law, personal injury refers to a broad category of injuries that occur in vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, wrongful death, and others. These include:

• Car Accidents – Most personal injury cases in America involve vehicle collisions caused by distracted driving or a failure to follow the rules of the road. Careless driving can lead to catastrophic injuries or wrongful death. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), more than 40,000 individuals in the United States die every year in car accidents. Many of these tests could have been prevented had the other motorist not been changing the radio station, using the cell phone, texting, reading their email, rubbernecking, driving while fatigued, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Within this category of auto accident injury cases it may also include: motorcycle accidents, Uber accidents, semi-truck accidents, bike accidents and pedestrian accident injuries.


• Medical Malpractice – Many injured patients file medical malpractice lawsuits against the doctor, health care provider, surgeon, or another medical practitioner who caused their injuries. Typically, medical mistakes occur when the doctor or other medical professional failed to provide reasonably skilled care that resulted in the patient's injury or death. These types of cases are extremely complex and require personal injury attorneys who specialize in injury cases involving doctor error. Sometimes nursing home negligence cases also fall within this case category.


• Slip and Fall Injuries – Many personal injury cases involve slipping, tripping, and falling caused by the negligent actions of the property owner, property manager, or others in charge of maintaining the premises. A personal injury attorney can determine the property owner's legal duty to see if they are legally liable and financially accountable to the victim for suffered injuries that occurred during a slip and fall incident.


• Pedestrian Injuries – Every motorist on the highway, roadway, or street must always watch out for pedestrians walking on the sidewalk, roadway, or in a crosswalk. Many pedestrian injuries involve TBIs (traumatic brain injuries), SCIs (spinal cord injuries), bone fractures, soft tissue injury, amputation, emotional trauma, and wrongful death. These accidents typically occur when the pedestrian is struck by a car, truck, motorcycle, or another vehicle on the road.


• Bicycle Accident – Every bicyclist has the legal right to share the road with commercial and passenger vehicles. However, a bicycle is often difficult to see at night, in poor weather conditions, or in harsh sunlight, which can lead to a dangerous scenario where they are struck by a traveling car, truck, or motorcycle. Many injured bicyclists will suffer head injuries, hand injury, jaw fractures, nerve damage, road rash, paralysis, spinal cord injury, facial injury, dental problems, amputation, and wrongful death.


• Defective Medications – Many patients are injured after taking a defective drug or being prescribed the wrong medication, the wrong dosage, or wrong drug administration instructions. These lawsuits often involve pharmaceutical manufacturers who design, made, and sold defective drugs, doctors who prescribe the wrong medication, nurses who gave the wrong drug, and pharmacists who fulfilled the prescription incorrectly.


• Defective Medical Device – Many patients are injured and killed every year after receiving a defective medical device or underwent surgery involving faulty surgical instruments, defective prosthetics, or malfunctioning pacemakers. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) routinely monitors and recalls many defective products. However, some are still available in the medical marketplace.


• Drowning Incident – Typically, a drowning event is the result of someone's negligence in a private residential pool, at a hotel pool, water park, or public beach. Every drowning incident is preventable if the swimmer and others take appropriate measures to ensure the swimming area is a safe environment for everyone.


• Animal Attacks – Dog bites and other animal attacks are serious problems in neighborhoods. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), more than 4.5 million individuals are bitten by dogs every year in America. Of those, over 27,000 injured victims need reconstructive surgery to restore use of their limb, face, neck, shoulders, or other body part and manage their resulting scar tissue.

• Work Related Accidents - Everyday hardworking people are seriously injured while working. Many times these injuries prevent them from providing for their families, and in some situations they result in lifelong disability. Thankfully, Illinois has workers compensation laws to provide for injured workers. Some industries most plagued by work accidents include: construction workers, factory workers and shipping and receiving workers.

Medical Malpractice Concerns

Not every bad outcome of a surgery, newborn delivery, doctor treatment, or hospital stay is caused by medical malpractice or an error (mistake) made by medical professional or facility. In some cases, the patient experienced an unintended side effect or unexpected result that was just a reaction in their body or some other force. Other times, the medical professional's actions caused outright harm that could have been prevented had they followed recommended standards of care.

In Illinois, a plaintiff filing a medical malpractice lawsuit must meet two specific conditions. These conditions include that the medical provider failed to meet the acceptable standards of care when providing the victim treatment. Second, their negligent action resulted in the victim's injuries. In some cases, the victim suffers life altering, severe harm and other times the patient suffers a wrongful death that could have been prevented. The most common factors in medical malpractice cases involve:

• Failure to Diagnose, Misdiagnoses, Delayed Diagnoses – Doctors in America misdiagnose over twelve million patients every year. While some of these conditions are challenging to diagnose, other times the proper diagnosis was missed due to substandard care that led to a lack of treatment, a delay in necessary treatment, or the patient's death.


• A Prescription Medication Error – The results of taking the wrong drug, the wrong dose, or taking the drug using the wrong instructions can create a catastrophic outcome. These prescription drug and pharmacy malpractice injuries might be the result of a pharmaceutical error, the nurse administering the wrong drug or the right drug at the wrong dose, the doctor prescribing the wrong medication, or the drug manufacturer's improper labeling.


• Congenital Birth Defects – Approximately one out of ten every medical malpractice lawsuits filed in America are filed against the obstetrician, gynecologist, or emergency room delivery doctor. Many of these medical malpractice cases involve infant and maternal victims who were injured through the negligence of the medical professional that led to a life-threatening complication including postpartum hemorrhage, spinal cord injury, fetal distress, asphyxia, cerebral palsy, and others.


• Surgical Mistakes – Any error occurring before, during, or after the operation can cause serious health complications. Medical malpractice cases involving a surgical error might involve a wrong surgery site, an incorrect incision site, and the surgeon leaving foreign objects like instruments and sponges inside the patient's body. Typically, surgical mistakes are caused by ineffective preoperative planning. Without corrective surgery, many of the surgical errors lead to lifelong damage, life-threatening infections, and wrongful death.


• Anesthesia Mistake – Surgeons use anesthesia to create temporarily-induced loss of awareness or sensation. However, when the powerful drug is administered improperly, the patient can be facing deadly consequences. Anesthesia mistakes can occur before and after the operation is performed. Many injured patients suffer from a severe problem in the recovery room, during an outpatient operation, or while sedated during a dental procedure.

Bad Drugs and Defective Medical Devices

Every year in the United States, millions of patients are injured after taking a bad medication or undergoing a surgical procedure that implanted a defective medical device. Many pharmaceutical manufacturers apply for certain waivers to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to receive a fast approval for their drug even though they have not yet conducted extensive clinical trials on the medication's safety and efficacy. As a result, many patients are injured or die unexpectedly because of serious problems with the drug. These drug makers can be held financially accountable because of their failure to provide doctors and patients with data on the dangers of using the medication.

Medical device manufacturers have a legal responsibility to ensure that every product they sell is safe to the consumer. Unfortunately, many of these devices that are known to cause patient's injuries have not yet been recalled from the medical marketplace. As a result, victims suffer serious health issues including life-threatening infections, metallosis (metal poisoning), bone fractures, and premature death. Some defective devices still available to consumers include:

• Metal hip replacement implants
• Medication-coated stands
• Pacemakers and defibrillators
• IVC blood clot filter
• Transvaginal mesh products
• Power morcellators
• Gastrointestinal (G.I.) scopes
• Surgical warming blankets
• Birth control rings

Hiring an Attorney is Necessary

Personal injury attorneys in our Chicago, Illinois office spend a considerable amount of time meeting with treating physicians, retained experts, and consultants to get a complete analysis of the full extent of the injury and the impact it will have on our client's life.

Attorney Jonathan Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC regularly attends medical conferences to learn the latest developments in areas of medicine that continually affect clients. While the conferences are not mandatory, and he receives no continuing legal education credit for his attendance, staying abreast of the most current developments allows him to both advocate for clients as well as effectively take the depositions of treating physicians as well as those retained by defense law firms to dispute the extent of our client's injuries.

Attorneys Who Appreciate the Current and Future Needs of The Injured Person

When a person suffers a significant injury in an accident, they have one opportunity to avail themselves to compensation under the law. As lawyers who have helped thousands of clients with significant injuries, we are mindful of these concerns and prepare every case in a manner to address their immediate and long-term needs to ensure that sufficient funds are available to meet these challenges in the future. Our considerable experience with life-altering injury cases has prepared us well to help you and your family during a time of uncertainty and fear.

A Law Firm With a Proven Record of Excellence for Assisting Seriously Injured Clients

Our years of representing clients with complex injuries enable us to evaluate cases at an early stage and to utilize experts within specific fields in order to effectively establish damages and to move cases towards resolution in a timely manner. No matter how complex your personal injury or medical malpractice case may be, we never shy away from taking on difficult matters.

The personal injury attorneys at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC understand the harm you endured was not your fault but the responsibility of others who acted negligently. Our legal team has successfully obtained millions on behalf of the victims and their family members to ensure they were adequately compensated to cover their medical expenses, household bills, lost wages, loss of future earnings, pain, suffering, and emotional damage and we can help your family too.

Our law firm encourages you to contact our attorneys today to schedule a no-obligation case consultation to discuss the merits of your monetary recovery claim at no charge to you. We accept all personal injury cases and wrongful death lawsuits through contingency fee arrangements. This legal contract postpones the payment of legal services until after we have successfully completed your case through a negotiated settlement or a jury verdict.

Our law firm gets results quickly because we understand you need money now. We proudly offer every client a “No Win/No-Fee” Guarantee, meaning if we are unable to secure financial compensation on your behalf you owe us nothing. All information you share with our law office will stay confidential.

Resources related to injuries and the law:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_injury
• http://www.courts.ca.gov/9618.htm
• http://www.hg.org/torts.html