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Understanding Virginia Negligence Laws As They Apply To Traffic Accidents
When car accidents occur, one person or multiple people can be found at fault for the collision. When someone is at fault for a crash, he or she is referred to as the negligent party (or the responsible party). For example, if someone caused a wreck because he or she was drunk, the collision could be blamed on that person's negligent behavior. However, sometimes car accidents can involve one or more negligent parties. This is why every state has laws governing negligence claims in order to dictate which party can collect a financial recovery.
Some of the laws that determine negligence after auto accidents include the contributory negligence rule, comparative fault system, and modified comparative fault rule. While most states recognize comparative negligence law and modified comparative fault rule, Virginia and the District of Columbia recognize the contributory negligence law. Unfortunately, this is a very harsh law that bars many people from collecting a monetary recovery after an accident.
Coping With A Spinal Cord Injury
If you have suffered a spinal cord injury in DC area, your life will very likely be changed forever. Victims will often suffer paraplegia, quadriplegia, or even total paralysis as a result of these injuries – and unfortunately, many will have to suffer the overwhelming financial costs associated with them.
Coping With a Spinal Cord Injury
In the moments after a car accident, many people will instinctively check their arms and legs to make sure they aren't injured. Unfortunately, it's harder for a victim to self-check for spinal cord injures – an affliction that can carry lifelong consequences.Spinal cord injuries can be caused by any violent blow to the head, neck or back. In some cases, bone fragments from shattered vertebrae can tear or cut the spinal cord, disrupting the nerve cells that carry commands from the brain to the body. As a result, victims may suffer chronic pain, mobility problems or even paralysis that will affect them for the rest of their lives.Traumatic accidents can cause many different types of spinal injuries, including:
What Mothers Need To Know About Injuries Caused By Epidural And Anesthesia Errors
During childbirth, many women opt for drugs to ease their painful contractions, and anesthesiologists are the doctors to administer the different types of anesthesia medications. Unfortunately, even highly-trained anesthesiologists can make a mistake during the childbirth process and injure the mother, the baby, or both.
Mistakes can be made when an anesthesiologist gives an epidural to a woman during a vaginal birth, and errors can also occur when a spinal anesthesia is used during a C-section. Whether a local anesthesia or a regional anesthesia is used during childbirth, anesthesiologists may be negligent in their actions.
Anesthesia mistakes usually occur during one of these steps:
- Medication preparation. An anesthesiologist may accidentally use the wrong type of medication, the wrong type of needle, or the wrong dose of anesthesia, all of which can harm patients. This is why anesthesiologists need to be very careful when preparing and calculating correct medications for each patient.
How Undiagnosed And Untreated Jaundice At Birth Causes Brain Damage
The birth of a baby is an exciting times for parents who hope that their children will be born healthy. While many births go smoothly, some births are complicated and traumatic and may require an emergency cesarean section.
Some babies suffer serious injuries at birth, such as brain injuries. Even if all goes well during labor and delivery, a baby may still suffer from brain damage if doctors fail to diagnose certain conditions. For example, if jaundice goes undiagnosed and untreated in an infant, the baby can suffer brain damage.
What Is Jaundice?
Jaundice refers to the yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes and is a very common condition in newborns. It occurs when too much bilirubin builds up in the blood, but it is usually a temporary and harmless condition. However, in some infants, there's a higher level of bilirubin, and their livers are too immature to properly remove the excess.
When this happens, newborns babies need to be treated for jaundice because high levels of bilirubin are toxic to brain tissue. To treat this condition, infants are usually placed under special blue-green lighting-a process called phototherapy-that helps change the bilirubin in the baby's body to a form that can be more easily excreted. Phototherapy usually lasts a few days until the baby's liver is more mature and can handle the bilirubin.
Untreated Brain Aneurysms In The ER
People go to emergency rooms (ER) to seek relief from their pain, trusting doctors will diagnose their medical conditions correctly and provide timely treatment. Unfortunately, some doctors fail to recognize common symptoms or misdiagnose health conditions. Sometimes when an injury or ailment is overlooked or not diagnosed correctly, it can mean the difference between life and death. This is sadly the case when a brain aneurysm is misdiagnosed due to ER negligence.
When a brain aneurysm is misdiagnosed and not treated, it can be a life-threatening condition because the aneurysm can rupture and cause brain damage or death. A brain aneurysm is caused by a weak spot in the wall of an artery that supplies blood to the brain. Not all brain aneurysms cause symptoms, but when people do experience symptoms of a brain aneurysm, most of the time the symptoms come on suddenly and can include:
- Intense, sudden headache
- Vision changes such as blurred vision
- Neck pain
Is Someone At Fault For Your Virginia Paralysis Injury? We Can Help.
If you have suffered paralysis after a serious accident in DC, you are probably overwhelmed by questions: How am I supposed to pay medical bills when I can't work? Should I sue the person who caused the accident? And perhaps most importantly, How can I tell who is responsible for my suffering?
The attorneys at Shevlin Smith want you to know that there is help available. We can answer all of your legal questions regarding your spinal cord injury case in your FREE consultation, including questions about injuries caused by:
- Car accidents. Roughly half of all spinal cord injuries nationwide are caused by motor vehicle accidents. The driver who hit you could easily be at fault, but so could the vehicle manufacturer if a faulty seat belt or an improperly designed headrest caused your injury.
- Violent trauma. Many spinal cord injuries are caused by a sudden impact, such as a fall from a great height or full-contact sports. Unfortunately, violent acts such as muggings, gang violence or domestic abuse are also common causes of paralysis.
Did A Delay In Diagnosing And Treating Meningitis Cause Your Brain Injury?
Maybe you went to the emergency room or your normal primary care doctor complaining of flu-like symptoms, a headache, and neck pain, only to be told you had the flu. Later, however, it was discovered that it was meningitis.
Doctors have been known to mistake the symptoms of meningitis for the flu, which can lead to delayed treatment. When meningitis isn't treated in its early stages, it is quite possible for someone to develop a life-threatening condition. Unfortunately, a serious brain injury or death may be the result of a doctor failing to diagnosis and treat meningitis.
What Is Meningitis?
Meningitis is an infection that can produce dangerous inflammation affecting the meninges (the membranes surrounding the brain). When inflammation occurs, it can result in the rapid onset of:
- a severe headache
- drowsiness
- nausea
- vomiting
- chills
- fever
- irritability
- confusion
- sensitivity to light
- a stiff neck
Was Your Brain Injury Made Worse As A Result Of A Radiology Error?
Trauma and car accidents involving head injuries happen at all hours of the day, which is why there are emergency rooms and doctors available to treat patients around the clock. If you need a CT scan, MRI, X-ray, or other imaging test that a radiologist reads, you would assume that a radiologist at your local hospital will be standing by at all hours; however, this isn't the case any more. Many small hospitals use a process called teleradiology.
Teleradiology allows a hospital to outsource the reading of scans. This means that a radiologist could be sitting at home in a different time zone or country, reading a scan for a hospital. Unfortunately, teleradiology can lead to confusion and medical mistakes that can adversely affect patients.
The downside of teleradiology is that doctors typically don't communicate with off-site radiologists or pass along patients' medical histories. Also, reports get mixed up, lost, or end up in the wrong file and never relayed to patients. In addition, a radiologist might notice a life-threatening condition and note it in the report instead of contacting the physician, which can result in delayed diagnosis and treatment. While teleradiology can work in many situations, it can lead to worse injuries for patients due to poor communication between medical professionals.
The Causes And Consequences Of Pharmacy Errors Involving Wrong Medications
Pills may be small, but they are powerful. And while this is good when used correctly, if a person gets the wrong pill, the consequences can be very serious and even fatal. Unfortunately, the wrong medication is occasionally given out at pharmacies causing customers to unknowingly take the wrong pills and suffer the adverse effects.
In this article, we will look at the reasons behind medication mistakes and the dangerous consequences that result.
Causes of Wrong Medications
Although there are many reasons a customer could receive the wrong drug from a pharmacy, the main cause is pharmacy negligence. The cause of negligence could be as simple as a pharmacist or pharmacy technician getting distracted when filling a prescription or being overly tired from working too many hours. Some other causes of pharmacy medication errors include:
- Sound alike or look-alike medications. When a prescription is called into a pharmacy, it can be confused with a sound-alike drug. Likewise, when a written prescription is taken to a pharmacy, it can be confused for another drug with a similar name. While these mistakes occur less and less because of the move to electronic prescriptions, they still happen from time to time. For instance, Altocor and Advicor sound similar, as do Amicar and Omacor. There are many drugs that sound similar to others but are used to treat different health concerns.
What Families Need To Know When Medical Malpractice Claims The Life Of Their Loved One
The loss of a loved one is one of the most devastating times for families to endure. Sadly, many family members don't get to say their goodbyes or hug their loved ones one last time before they are gone. What makes the matter worse is when the loss of a family member is caused by an error on the part of a medical professional. The shocking reality is that doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, pharmacists, and other medical professionals have made critical mistakes that have cost patients their lives. In fact, preventable medical errors actually claim hundreds of thousands of people's lives every year.
Deadly mistakes made by healthcare professionals are acts of carelessness and negligence that are considered medical malpractice. Because medical professionals are held to a standard of care, families who have lost their loved ones due to medical negligence need to learn all they can about wrongful death due to medical malpractice. For this reason, our law firm has created this page to provide surviving family members with information about wrongful death claims as they relate to medical negligence, the types of damages families can recover, and other resources for grieving families going through such a difficult time.
703-591-0067
10513 Judicial Drive, Suite 200, Fairfax, VA 22030
703-591-0067
From our office in Fairfax, Shevlin Smith, P.C. serves clients throughout Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., including Alexandria, Annandale, Arlington, Ashburn, Burke, Centreville, Dale City, Fair Oaks, Leesburg, Manassas, McLean, Oakton, Reston, Springfield, and Woodbridge, as well as Fairfax County, Arlington County, Fauquier County, Loudoun County, and Prince William County.
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