Spinal cord injuries can lead to pain, permanent disabilities, emotional distress, and financial hardships. These injuries can impact every aspect of your life. Many spinal cord injuries often happen due to negligence or wrongdoing, unnecessarily affecting the rest of your life.
If you’re ready to seek damages after your spinal cord injury, determining the severity of your injury can help you understand how much compensation you’re eligible for. You can learn more about spinal cord injuries and their far-reaching effects on one’s life, especially finances.
What Is a Spinal Cord Injury?
A spinal cord injury damages the cells and nerves connecting your brain and the rest of your nervous system. Spinal cord injuries can be painful, debilitating, and sometimes paralyzing. Spinal cord injuries can cause permanent damage in some instances.
These injuries are often due to trauma or blow to the spinal cord area, but can also stem from diseases or degeneration. A spinal cord injury can cause a loss of mobility, reduced tactile sensations, incontinence, spasms, difficulty breathing, and stinging pain.
Common Causes of Spinal Cord Injuries
Below is a list of the many common causes of severe spinal cord injuries that can lead to financial compensation.
- Slip and Falls
- Auto Accidents
- Bike Accidents
- Truck Accidents
- Pedestrian Accidents
- Motorcycle Accidents
- Construction Accidents
- Birth Injuries
- Personal Injuries
- Medical Malpractice
- Nursing Home Negligence
- Landlord Negligence
- Premises Liabilities
- Violence or Assault
The Cost of a Spinal Cord Injury in the Bronx
Living anywhere in New York City is already an expensive task, but living in the Bronx with a spinal cord injury can add more financial stress to your life.
Along with medical expenses, people with spinal cord injuries also face rehabilitation costs, home modification costs, lost wages, lost earning capabilities, decreased quality of life, bodily pain, and emotional suffering.
Potential Types of Compensation
If you suffered a spinal cord injury in the Bronx through no fault of your own, you may be entitled to compensation. But how much compensation are you entitled to?
Before discussing the weight of severity on a compensation settlement, it’s important to understand what types of compensation are available.
Economic Compensation
Economic compensation is straightforward. Economic compensation related to spinal cord injuries can help people cover past medical expenses, future medical expenses, lost wages, and personal property damages related to the injury.
Essentially, economic compensation helps with any financial consequences that stemmed from your spinal cord injury.
Non-Economic Compensation
Non-economic compensation is also called general compensation. This type of compensation helps with other consequences of spinal cord injury.
You can receive non-economic compensation for pain, suffering, emotional distress, loss of body part, loss of bodily function, lessened quality of life, disfigurement, excessive scarring, or significant inconvenience. Spinal cord injury compensation can be a combination of economic and non-economic damages.
Severity and Compensation
The severity of the spinal cord injury will directly influence the compensation. The severity of an injury concerns the consequences of the injury, as well as associated financial implications.
For example, if your injury requires surgery and subsequent long-term physical therapy, you would likely be awarded more than someone who only required surgery. However, the severity assessment will range between injuries and individuals, as many factors play a role in determining severity.
Complete Vs. Incomplete Injuries
Spinal cord injuries can be classified in two ways: complete and incomplete. An incomplete spinal cord injury means some nerve signals can still function and transmit below the injury.
A complete spinal cord injury means no nerve signals can get through the injury region. A complete spinal cord injury is considered more severe, therefore awarding more compensation.
Get the Compensation You Deserve
Some victims of spinal cord injuries have received millions of dollars in compensation.
From auto accident injuries to work-related injuries and more, you can get the compensation you deserve for a spinal cord injury when you contact the right law firm.
The attorneys at Diamond Injury Law can help you make your claim and receive appropriate compensation.
