Unlike paraplegia, which involves a total loss of bodily function below the waist, quadriplegia entails a complete loss of sensory and motor function below the neck—including in all four limbs: hence the term “quad.” Injuries this severe are life-changing and often make for uniquely complex civil litigation.
As any experienced paralysis injury attorney knows, no amount of money can make up for the immense harm that paralysis can cause. Therefore, guidance from a compassionate Houston quadriplegia injury lawyer could make a massive difference in your ability to mitigate the long-term effects of your injury and maximize your quality of life.
Quadriplegia often stems from an undiagnosed or improperly treated medical condition, such as a brain tumor or stroke. However, these injuries generally result from severe trauma to your spinal cord, also known as the cervical spine. A “complete” spinal cord injury—or an injury that severs your spinal cord at the injury site—cuts off communication between your brain and the rest of your nervous system. In these cases, your brain cannot receive or send signals to your body.
Injuries of this nature can occur in various types of accidents, including:
When filing a lawsuit over your quadriplegia injury, you must prove that the accident stemmed from someone else’s “negligence” or their failure to adhere to a duty of care requiring them to act responsibly. For instance, motor vehicle drivers are expected to follow traffic laws. Therefore, when someone causes your quadriplegia injury by running a red light in Houston, a tenacious attorney could help pursue civil litigation against the reckless driver for their “breach of duty.”
Because quadriplegia is a lifelong and universally debilitating injury, you must account for your past and future incident-related losses. In financial terms, recovering damages means demanding compensation for emergency medical bills, the cost of in-home and out-patient care, medical equipment expenses like wheelchairs, and costs of prescription pain medications, as well as lost earning ability and future earnings.
Non-economic losses typically focus on physical pain and suffering, but it is also essential to account for mental and emotional anguish, including lost consortium and lost enjoyment of life. A hardworking lawyer in Houston could go into more detail about potentially compensable losses following a quadriplegia injury during a private consultation.
Paralysis can have devastating and life-altering repercussions, but quadriplegia is by far the most severe in terms of the physical limitations it leaves you with and the financial and personal losses those limitations will have on your life. In many cases, your family will experience those losses, as well. Therefore, it is vital for anyone who develops quadriplegia due to someone else’s negligence to thoroughly understand and then make effective use of their right to pursue civil recovery.
Working closely with a Houston quadriplegia injury lawyer could be the key to recovering as much compensation as possible for this extraordinary catastrophic injury. Call Roberts Markland LLP today to learn more and schedule a meeting with our legal team members.
