If you have a Baton Rouge, LA personal injury claim, Baton Rouge personal injury lawyers are here to advocate for you. Call one of the Baton Rouge personal injury lawyers listed on this site for a free initial consultation.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana is the state capital of Louisiana and with a population of approximately 230,000 people, is the second largest city in Louisiana, behind New Orleans. The Greater Baton Rouge area population is fast approaching a population of 805,000 people. Baton Rouge, like most of Louisiana continues to recover and grow in the wake of recent national disasters.
Baton Rouge's economy continues to flourish, especially in the petrochemical and seaport transportation industries. Louisiana State University is located in Baton Rouge as well, which is one of the states largest employers. Baton Rouge's location along the Mississippi River and other waterways has provided Baton Rouge with excellent seaports, including the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, which is the ninth largest port in terms of tonnage in the United States.
As noted earlier, Baton Rouge is rapidly growing as the region recovers from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As inhabitants of an incredibly diverse and unique area, residents of Baton Rouge are involved in a broad array of professions and activities, which bring with them diverse and unique risks. Baton Rouge is home to large tourism, educational facilities and hospitality industries and the surrounding area is traditionally home to seafood businesses.
The Baton Rouge area is also home to a variety of oil, energy, and chemical jobs. Workers in these fields might be injured on the job as a result of chemical or mechanical processes, sometimes suffering devastating bodily injuries. The BP Oil disaster is just one of many examples. The unique nature of Baton Rouge also means that citizens face unique situations that can lead to injuries. From port accidents and drunk drivers to hurricanes and oil spills, the residents of Baton Rouge face a variety of dangers every day.
In addition, Baton Rouge inhabitants suffer from other injuries that are typical across the nation and can be potentially catastrophic. Certainly, living in the Baton Rouge area has many benefits such as a growing job market, delicious food, widespread art and excellent educational institutions. However, life in the Big Easy also creates a high level of risk for many of its inhabitants.
It is in these unfortunate instances that a Baton Rouge personal injury lawyer can help you and provide the expertise to aggressively advocate on your behalf. If you have a Baton Rouge personal injury claim, call one of the qualified Baton Rouge personal injury attorneys listed on this site for a free initial consultation.
What is a Personal Injury Attorney and what types of matters does a Baton Rouge Personal Injury Attorney’s practice cover?
Many different types of injuries exist and many of them can cause serious financial, emotional, and logistical problems for a victim and members of a victim’s family. A Baton Rouge personal injury attorney can advise a victim or their family as to their rights. Southeast Louisiana Personal Injury Attorneys can also help you find the appropriate medical care. Although no one can truly fix the damages caused by a personal injury, a Baton Rouge personal injury lawyer will often be able to get you monetary compensation to provide for you, take care of your family if you cannot work, and cover past and future medical expenses.
Why do you need a Baton Rouge Personal Injury Lawyer?
An experienced Baton Rouge personal injury lawyer has experience fighting with and dealing with insurance companies. A Baton Rouge personal injury attorney can help you negotiate an acceptable settlement or, if necessary, bring your claim to trial so you get the money you are entitled to under Louisiana law.
Baton Rouge is a very diverse city, racially and economically. Because of this, a diverse range of problems exist in Baton Rouge. Call a Baton Rouge Personal Injury Attorney today for help with your injuries.
Proving a personal injury claim in court can be an extremely complicated task, especially for the average person who might not understand the legal concepts involved. Even for trained Louisiana injury attorneys who are experienced in Louisiana personal injury law, it is sometimes difficult to prove that an injury is someone else’s fault, and medical and scientific experts could be needed to adequately demonstrate why you should recover. Baton Rouge personal injury lawyers can explain to you the various legal doctrines that could allow you to recover money, including negligence, strict liability, or intentional tort.
In a negligence-based case in Louisiana, you must prove:
- The person or party that caused your injury owed you a duty of care, but did not live up to that duty;
- There was sufficient causation, or connection, between that person’s action and your injury to constitute a breach of their duty to you; and
- You suffered compensable damages as a result. The analysis only becomes more complicated in a strict liability case, where you seek to hold the defendant responsible for your injuries regardless of fault, or negligence.
Baton Rouge Product Defect Attorney – Defective Products Attorney – Product Liability Lawyers
In products liability cases, your Baton Rouge personal injury attorney must help you prove these following elements: (1) The defendant manufactured the product which injured you; (2) A defect existing in the product when it was sold made it unreasonably dangerous for consumer use; (3) The unreasonably dangerous defect caused the injury; (4) The damage arose from a reasonably anticipated use of the product; and (5) the element that makes the product unreasonably dangerous existed at the time the product left manufacturer’s control. Often, a variety of medical and scientific experts might be involved in proving these facts and an experienced Baton Rouge personal injury attorney or Baton Rouge product liability lawyer can help find these experts and arrange for them to appear at trial to testify on your behalf, after making a thorough investigation and analysis.
Baton Rouge Injury Lawyer – Burn Injuries – Pain & Suffering and Mental Anguish
Baton Rouge Lawyers Prove Everyone’s Fault
Sometimes there is more than one person to blame. In these cases, a Baton Rouge personal injury lawyer may decide to bring a claim against multiple defendants. Consider the following example: If you have been injured by a defective consumer product, the manufacturer may be liable under a theory of products liability; however, other people in the distribution of the defective product, including the retailer or distributor, may also be strictly liable for your injuries. In Louisiana, parties are usually only financially responsible for their percentage of fault causing the injury.
Comparative Fault — Why You Need an Experienced Accident Attorney On Your Side
A Baton Rouge, LA personal injury attorney will also understand comparative negligence — that is, the idea that your own negligence might reduce your economic recovery. We all know North Foster Drive and how dangerous it is; if you were traveling on North Foster Drive above the posted speed limit and someone ran the red light at U.S. 61 Business and you hit them; you could hire a Baton Rouge car accident lawyer to prosecute your injury claim. But, what if the insurance defense lawyer for the car that ran the red light takes the position that, had you been at or below the speed limit on North Foster Drive, you would have been able to stop your car and you would have avoided the car accident. In this fact situation, it is reasonable that an East Baton Rouge Parish jury could find you were 25% at fault but the other driver involved was 75% at fault. If this happened, you would only receive 75% of whatever monies were awarded.
Obviously, this analysis varies depending upon the facts of your Baton Rouge injury case, and proving all of these elements in court can become extremely complicated. A trained Baton Rouge personal injury attorney or Southeastern Louisiana personal injury lawyer can help you navigate these difficult legal concepts as well as the Louisiana court system.
Amount of Recovery
Finally, a Baton Rouge personal injury attorney or other East Baton Rouge Parish personal injury attorney can help you determine what your claim is worth and which damages you can likely recover. Under Louisiana law, a party found legally responsible for your injury is liable for:
- Past, current, and future estimated medical expenses;
- Time off from work due to injury, including lost wages and lost earning capacity;
- Property damage, such as damage to your car during an automobile accident;
- The cost of hiring help to perform household chores you couldn’t perform because of your injury;
- Damages for permanent disfigurement or disability;
- Emotional distress, including anxiety, depression, interference with family relationships, loss of consortium and loss of enjoyment of life; and,
- Other expenses that are a direct result of your injury.
Baton Rouge personal injury lawyers represent not only injury victims but also their families and spouses in actions throughout Louisiana and the Greater Baton Rouge area. If you or a loved one has been injured, you may be able to recover for medical expenses as well as a variety of other damages. You should contact one of the experienced Baton Rouge personal injury attorneys to represent you and protect your rights.
How long do you have to file a personal injury claim in Louisiana?
Under Louisiana’s period of prescription, you only have one (1) year to file a personal injury claim against the party or people that caused your injury. You should consult a Baton Rouge accident lawyer or a Southeastern Louisiana personal injury attorney to review your claim and pursue legal action before Louisiana’s one-year prescriptive period has expired.
What does a Baton Rouge personal injury lawyer charge?
Lawyers usually charge an hourly rate plus a retainer fee. Most lawyers use a system of billable hours and keep records of how long they work on your case, then make you pay according to how many hours they spent on the case. Baton Rouge personal injury attorneys use an entirely different fee structure. Louisiana laws allow personal injury lawyers, or “PI lawyers” for short, to enter into “contingency fee” agreements with their clients. This means that your Baton Rouge personal injury lawyer will usually accept a percentage of any money recovered if they win the case for you. Louisiana law does not place a cap on the percentage that the attorney can charge. The availability of a contingency fee agreement for an injury victim is very important because it can be extremely expensive for an injured person, who might already be out of work due to their injury, to pay a lawyer up-front.
The mechanics of a contingency fee contract can change between lawyers and in different states; however, a contingency fee agreement essentially means that if the injured person does not get any money, then they do not owe the lawyer anything for representing them. You can readily see how beneficial this arrangement is for injury victims: they only pay for a lawyer if they win their lawsuit, and, because the more money for the victim means more money for the lawyer, the lawyer has an extra incentive to work hard on their case. Please contact a Southeastern Louisiana personal injury lawyer to discuss your case today.
Qualified Baton Rouge trial attorneys are capable of investigating, preparing, presenting, and filing your lawsuit at all levels of the state and federal courts.
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