The Statute of Limitations and Your Personal Injury Claim
If you’ve been injured in an accident and believe you may be able to pursue damages in a personal injury suit, it is important to be aware of the statute of limitations, which is the limit on the amount of time in which you may pursue a claim. The statute of limitations generally begins on the day the claim arises: the day a car crash occurred, for instance, or the day you suffered a slip-and-fall accident.
When I sit down with a prospective workers’ compensation client, one of the first questions I ask them is where they initially treated for their work injury. If the answer is one of the local “work injury processing plants,” which will remain nameless in this article, my next question is why did they choose to treat there. Almost always, the client tells me that this is where they were specifically told to seek medical treatment by their employer or its workers’ compensation insurance company, and they were not given the option to treat elsewhere.
Many people struggle with the idea that a property owner can be liable for injuries sustained by a trespasser on his or her property. The truth is that in most circumstances the duty owed by a landowner to an unknown trespasser is very limited. However, there are still situations where holding a landowner liable for injuries sustained by trespassers makes sense. Pennsylvania law recognizes this and does impose liability for injuries suffered by trespassers under certain circumstances.
Many people do not know what to expect when contesting a denial of workers’ compensation benefits. Often, people expect that the process is similar to that of other personal injury matters. That is not the case. In Pennsylvania, the workers’ compensation system has a separate and specialized administrative legal system that has its own procedures and its own corps of specially trained judges. While this system is not as formalized or costly as the regular court system, it is still a formal proceeding that requires the assistance of an experienced workers’ comp attorney.
The Difference Between Wrongful Death and Survivorship
Cases involving the death of a person caused by the negligence of another are already complicated. However, in Pennsylvania they can be more confusing due in part to a somewhat unique feature of our state tort law. Cases involving death in the Commonwealth are actually composed of two distinct legal causes of action — wrongful death and survivorship. While these are typically tried together and are in many ways hopelessly intertwined, the distinction can have important consequences for the surviving family members.
Sidewalks in disrepair are becoming an increasingly common sight throughout many of the cities and towns of central and southeastern Pennsylvania. It should come as no surprise that slip and trip accidents caused by dangerous sidewalks have also become increasingly common. In these cases, it may not always be clear who is responsible for maintenance and, by extension, liable for injuries caused by the failure to maintain.
Whether commuting to work or riding for pleasure, bicyclists face some significant challenges while riding on Pennsylvania roads. A major contributing factor to this problem is that many motorists do not know how to interact with cyclists. Others essentially ignore their presence. Either of these approaches can easily lead to collisions and near-collisions that result in serious injuries for cyclists.
For the most part, people associate on-the-job injuries with blue-collar workplaces because of the physically intense nature of the work and the often dangerous conditions. Although it’s true that most workplace injuries do occur in that type of setting, significant injuries in an office setting are far from unheard of and are even becoming more common as office work grows to encompass a larger percentage of the workforce. Therefore, it is important for white collar workers to understand that Pennsylvania’s workers’ compensation laws also apply to them.
Trials and the many steps that lead up to them are designed to bring out the facts. In many cases, this can be fairly straightforward. Did the blue car run the red light? What do the witnesses have to say? However, what if the fact in dispute is something that is not readily observable like the existence of a medical condition or the slipperiness of a floor? What if no one but the parties actually witnessed the accident and they disagree on what happened? In cases such as these, attorneys must call on reliable expert witnesses to clarify and fill in the gaps for the jury.
Scenic Lancaster County is well known for the horse-drawn carriages that share our roads. However, when cars and horses collide, terrible injuries can result. What Pennsylvania laws govern horses on our roads and what can you do to avoid these accidents?
Dogs can be man’s best friend — or his worst enemy. Americans love their pets. Unfortunately, not all of the 78.2 million dogs in the United States have been properly trained. To lessen your chances of getting bitten by a hostile dog, learn to recognize signs that a dog may be aggressive:
If you are injured in a motor vehicle accident caused by someone else, as part of your claim for monetary damages, you first will have access to the liability coverage under the policy of the owner of the vehicle which caused the accident. If the vehicle is uninsured (which is a violation of Pennsylvania law) or underinsured (the amount of liability coverage is not sufficient to compensate you for your losses), then you can turn to the U benefits you purchased under your own policy for additional coverage.
