Important Legal Disclaimer: These dollar values are from past results and do not guarantee or suggest that your matter will have a similar outcome. The facts and circumstances which led to your injury are likely to be different, and a personal injury attorney can provide specific guidance only after engaging in a fact-intensive analysis. Furthermore, the worth of your personal injury case will ultimately be decided by a jury.

Shoulder Injury Compensation Payouts

Once again, the following figures do not guarantee that your matter will have a similar outcome.  Only by reviewing your claim with an experienced lawyer will you gain an idea of how much your claim may be worth.  However, shoulder injury accidents in Oklahoma have resulted in the following verdicts and settlements:

• $400,000 for a car crash that aggravated preexisting injuries.
• $275,000 for a vehicular accident resulting in multiple injuries and multiple surgeries.
• $250,000 for a shoulder injury that required surgery to repair.
• $200,000 for a multiple injuries resulting from an automotive accident.
• $170,000 for an injury caused by a truck accident.
• $125,000 for a work-related shoulder injury requiring surgical repair.

Ultimately, the worth of your claim depends on factors such as:

• The severity of the injury.
• How long the injury and/or its complications will last.
• The extent to which the victim became disabled or impaired.
• The medical costs resulting from the injury.
• Income and earnings lost due to the injury, including anticipated lost earnings.
• The extent to which the victim was at fault, if at all, for the accident.

According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), about 7.5 million people received medical care for shoulder injuries in 2006.  Over half of these patients – roughly 4.1 million people – were diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff, a common injury in athletes.  Other than sports accidents, common causes of torn rotator cuffs and other severe shoulder injuries include:

• Bus Accidents
• Car Accidents
• Dog Bites
• Medical Malpractice
• Motorcycle Accidents
• Nursing Home Abuse
• Slip and Fall Accidents
• Truck Accidents

If your shoulder injury was caused by another person’s careless or reckless actions, you could be entitled to compensation for your medical bills, pain and suffering, and lost income, including costs you are expected to incur in the future.  The experienced injury lawyers of Hasbrook & Hasbrook can help you fight for the compensation you deserve.  Call our law offices right away at (405) 235-1551 to set up a free consultation regarding your shoulder injury claim.

Common Shoulder Injuries: Sprains, Strains, Dislocations, and Bursitis

The shoulder is a complex intersection of bones, nerves, muscles, tendons, and tough bands of connective tissue called ligaments.  When any of these anatomical components are damaged by trauma or negligent medical care, the victim experiences agonizing pain while losing strength, flexibility, and motion in the affected joint.  For Oklahomans whose livelihoods depend on physical labor, such as movers, construction workers, and warehouse workers, an injury of this nature can be financially as well as physically devastating.  And, no matter what sort of job the victim performs, he or she is likely to require costly medical care.

Trauma can result  are several different types of serious injuries, including fractures and soft tissue injuries such as:

• Broken Arm (Humerus Fracture)
• Broken Collarbone (Fractured Clavicle)
• Broken Shoulder Blade (Fractured Scapula)
• Bursitis
• Dislocated Shoulder Joint
• Rotator Cuff Tears
• Sprains (Torn Ligaments)
• Strains (Muscle Tears)
• Torn Labrum (Labral Tear)

In other cases, medical malpractice is to blame.  Malpractice occurs when a doctor, surgeon, or other healthcare professional makes negligent errors leading to the preventable injury of a patient.  For example, shoulder dystocia is a common birth injury caused by the application of excess force during a difficult birth.  If the OB-GYN pulls too hard when extracting an infant, the baby’s shoulder can sustain major, long-term damage.

Schedule a Free Consultation

The injury attorneys of Hasbrook & Hasbrook have over 75 years of combined experience representing accident victims in Oklahoma City and the surrounding area, including Edmond, El Reno, Moore, Norman, Shawnee, Stillwater, Seminole, Cushing, Chickasha, and more.  If you suffered a soft tissue injury, bone fracture, or other serious shoulder joint injury in the Oklahoma City due to the inappropriate actions of another person, we may be able to help you recover compensation for your medical bills, pain and suffering, lost income, and other losses resulting from your accident.

Call our law offices right away at (405) 235-1551 to set up a free and confidential legal consultation.

Important Legal Disclaimer: These dollar values are from past results and do not guarantee or suggest that your matter will have a similar outcome. The facts and circumstances which led to your injury are likely to be different, and an attorney can provide specific guidance only after engaging in a fact-intensive analysis. Furthermore, the worth of your personal injury case will ultimately be decided by a jury.

If you or your loved one sustained a spinal cord injury (SCI) because of another person or company’s careless actions, you may be entitled to significant compensation. In addition to covering a wide variety of current expenses, compensation can also help to lighten you and your family’s financial burden years into the future.

In an effort to help SCI victims and their loved ones understand the financial aspects of a personal injury lawsuit, we have compiled this simple legal guide explaining the different types of compensation which can be awarded to plaintiffs. It also provides some examples of verdicts and settlements which have been awarded to SCI plaintiffs throughout the United States. If you have any questions about getting compensated for a spinal cord injury in the Oklahoma City area, we encourage you to call the law offices of Hasbrook & Hasbrook at (405) 235-1551 for a free and private legal consultation.

What Types of Compensation Are Available in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

The spinal cord is a long bundle of nerve fibers which carries messages between the brain and body. When the spinal cord is injured in a car accident or slip and fall accident, or is damaged by medical malpractice (doctor negligence), the injury victim suffers an array of devastating effects. He or she may lose physical sensation, have trouble breathing and swallowing, become fully or partially paralyzed, have fecal or urinary incontinence, experience severe chronic pain, lose sexual function, develop chronic insomnia, and become severely depressed. In addition to facing these painful and disabling medical complications, the victim is also confronted with tremendous medical expenses — all at a time when they may have to permanently end their career.

These are complex physical, emotional, and financial factors, all of which must be carefully considered with input from medical and economic experts, when deciding what sort of compensation, or damages, should be awarded to the plaintiff. To account for different harms suffered by the plaintiff, compensation is broken down into a few different components, which are described below:

Economic Damages — This type of compensation is called “economic” because it describes damages which can be clearly quantified and calculated. Loss of immediate and future income, as well as the costs of current and projected medical bills, are examples of economic damages.

Non-Economic Damages — Non-economic damages are just the opposite: those which cannot be clearly quantified or calculated. Examples of non-economic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of consortium/companionship, and loss of enjoyment of life.

Punitive (Exemplary) Damages — Punitive damages are only awarded in cases where the defendant’s conduct was egregious, meaning there was extreme misconduct. The purpose of awarding punitive damages is twofold: to punish the defendant, and to act as a deterrent. Punitive damages are awarded less frequently than compensatory damages, but tend to involve larger amounts.

Compensatory Damages — In contrast to punitive damages, compensatory damages exist purely to compensate the plaintiff. Compensatory damages can encompass a wide range of both economic and non-economic damages.

Spinal Cord Injury Verdicts and Settlements

As noted in the legal disclaimer above, the following jury verdicts and out-of-court settlements are not intended to serve as a reflection of every spinal cord injury case. We present them here purely for informational purposes, so that accident victims and their loved ones can develop a clearer idea of the types of figures which have resulted from previous cases across the U.S. We’ve presented them here with brief descriptions of the related cases.

• $12 million settlement for a 16-year-old Minnesota girl who became paralyzed from the neck down (quadriplegia/tetraplegia) and ventilator-dependent after getting into a serious car accident.
• $6.5 million verdict awarded to a Virginia plaintiff whose doctor committed medical malpractice by failing to diagnose an existing SCI.
• $5.6 million settlement for a Pennsylvania bar patron whose spinal cord was damaged when the building’s roof collapsed.
• $5 million settlement for a 64-year-old Ohio man whose vehicle was struck in a truck accident.
• $3.175 million settlement for a California man who sustained an SCI while attempting to open an active fire hydrant the plaintiff believed had been shut off.
• $2.75 million settlement for a 35-year-old Illinois man whose existing spinal injuries were worsened by an automotive accident, eventually requiring three surgeries.
• $2.25 million settlement for a 26-year-old California man who received a delayed diagnosis as a result of doctor negligence.
• $2.1 million settlement for a 66-year old Minnesota plaintiff who became quadriplegic after suffering an accidental fall while out shopping.
• $1.3 million verdict awarded to a Minnesota teenager who fell into a partially-completed swimming pool.
• $1 million settlement for an Oklahoma plaintiff who was injured in a truck accident involving driver fatigue.
• $600,000 settlement for a New York woman who sustained a spinal cord contusion (rupture) in a traffic accident.
• $429,000 verdict awarded to a Georgia man whose vehicle was struck in a rear-end collision.

Talk To Us

If you, your spouse, or one of your family members suffered spinal cord damage in an accident, or was injured by medical malpractice, the catastrophic injury attorneys of Hasbrook & Hasbrook encourage you to call us at (405) 235-1551 to start exploring your legal options in a free and confidential consultation. Our accomplished and passionate legal team brings over 75 years of combined experience to every case we work on. We handle personal injury matters throughout Oklahoma City and the surrounding area.

Important Legal Disclaimer: These dollar values are from past results and do not guarantee or suggest that your matter will have a similar outcome. The facts and circumstances which led to your injury are likely to be different, and an attorney can provide specific guidance only after engaging in a fact-intensive analysis. Furthermore, the worth of your personal injury case will ultimately be decided by a jury.

Regardless of whether a burn is caused by fire, electricity, friction, chemicals, radiation, or scalding liquids, the bottom line for the victim is always the same: agonizing pain, emotional distress, and financial hardship resulting from medical bills. If you or one of your loved ones suffered a second, third, or fourth degree burn in the Oklahoma City area, you may be entitled to compensation to help cover your losses and expenses.

The attorneys of Hasbrook & Hasbrook have assembled this short legal guide to help burn victims and their loved ones gain a clearer understanding of how compensation works in personal injury lawsuits. If you have any questions about anything you read in this guide, we encourage you to call our law offices at (405) 235-1551 for a free and private legal consultation. We are proud to serve clients throughout the Oklahoma City area, including Bricktown, the Plaza District, Deep Deuce, Automobile Alley, and Edgemere Heights.

How is Compensation Determined in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

Severe burns cause constant and excruciating pain, especially when they are being treated. The recovery process of debridement and skin grafting is notorious for being nearly as agonizing, if not more agonizing, than burn injuries themselves. Once the grueling recovery process is finally completed, there is always a risk that the patient’s body will reject the new graft, leading to complications such as bleeding, numbness, and infections.

On top of these devastating physical effects, scarring and disfigurement often lead burn victims to struggle with severe depression and poor self-esteem, especially if they are children or teenagers. Enormous medical bills – and the ever-present risk of needing additional surgeries in the future – only aggravate this already overwhelming situation.

Furthermore, depending on which area of the body is affected by the burn, the victim may be unable to return to work at his or her old job. The individual may have to take a lower-paying position, move to a different company, or end their career and their professional dreams. They may then need to apply for disability benefits, which is a lengthy and complicated process with a high statistical rate of denials and rejections.
All of these factors will be weighed when determining what sort of compensation is necessary to provide the plaintiff with adequate care. Economic and medical experts are frequently called upon to provide testimony about current and projected bills and losses, so that the jury verdict or out-of-court settlement will be sufficient not only in the present day, but also in the long-term. If the burn victim was previously supporting a spouse and/or children, the verdict or settlement should reflect the costs of providing for a family.

Compensation, or damages, in a lawsuit can be “economic” or “non-economic.” Economic damages involve clear, quantifiable values, such as the cost of skin graft surgery or the financial loss of being out of work for a certain number of months. Non-economic damages attempt to place a dollar value on more abstract and intangible losses, which are often the greatest losses of all. Examples of non-economic damages include loss of enjoyment of life, emotional trauma, and the pain and suffering felt by the victim.

If the defendant engaged in particularly extreme misconduct, he or she may be ordered to pay punitive (exemplary) damages as a punishment. Otherwise, the plaintiff can be compensated with compensatory damages, which do not involve punishment like punitive damages. Both economic and non-economic damages can also be compensatory damages.

Settlements and Verdicts Awarded to Burn Victims

To reemphasize the disclaimer at the top of this page, the following verdicts and settlements do not necessarily reflect the financial outcome of every burn injury case. We present them here purely for educational purposes.

• $52.473 million verdict awarded in a California propane explosion which non-fatally injured three plaintiffs and caused one wrongful death.
• $35 million settlement for a Pennsylvania boy who was severely scalded by a falling stove.
• $25 million settlement for a California construction worker who required multiple amputations after sustaining third degree burns to more than 20% of his body.
• $6 million settlement for a 31-year-old California building painter. He sustained thermal burns to over 60% of his body when one of his tools made contact with a power line.
• $3.5 million settlement reached in an Arizona wrongful death case involving nursing home negligence. The resident was fatally burned.
• $2.6 million settlement for an infant who was burned by hot coffee in California.
• $1.5 million settlement for a Minnesota woman who was burned after the vehicle she was traveling in was rear-ended, causing the gas tank to rupture.
• $1 million settlement for a California plaintiff. Nerves in the plaintiff’s hand were burned by a defective microwave.
• $685,000 settlement for a Texas plaintiff who sustained burns due to negligent maintenance of a gas line.
• $300,000 settlement for a 60-year-old Minnesota man who was burned by a defective industrial cooker.
• $200,000 post-verdict settlement reached in a case involving a 4-year-old Connecticut boy was burned by a lighter without a child-proof device.
• $50,000 settlement for a Connecticut woman who was burned when soup fell into her lap at a restaurant.

Don’t Delay – Consult With Us Today

If you suffered a second degree burn, third degree burn, or fourth degree burn because of a car accident, a defective product, an industrial accident, or medical malpractice, you may be able to recover significant compensation to help cover current and future costs related to your accident. Call Hasbrook & Hasbrook at (405) 235-1551 to schedule a free, completely confidential legal consultation today.