Do you have questions about how to handle neglect in a nursing home? Check out these 4 nursing home abuse facts, then give our Atlanta lawyer a call today.
1) Medical Bills
When we evaluate nursing home negligence cases, one of the things we have to look at is the amount of damage that’s been caused, and a lot of that comes from medical expenses. Nursing home negligence cases are extremely expensive to bring forward. They involve a lot of time, depositions, and expert testimony. These are cases that can take a long time. You don’t want to pursue one of these cases when your recovery is not going to exceed what the value of the case is. In looking at a nursing home case, what you want to look at is how significant the injuries are, specifically if there are permanent injuries or if someone passed away as a result.
2) Settlement Timeline
When clients come to see us over claims that involve nursing home negligence, we are often asked how long they should expect these cases to take. The answer is that nursing home cases usually take quite a while to resolve. Oftentimes, nursing home cases, because of their nature, are not usually the types of cases that can be resolved prior to filing a lawsuit. These types of cases involve a lot of discovery of information and gathering of evidence to support the claim, and usually involve numerous expert witnesses.
3) Settlement Offers
In nursing home negligence cases, as with virtually every other type of personal injury case, it’s almost never advisable to take the first offer that the insurance company gives. In just about every instance, the insurance company’s first offer is going to be low. In fact, it’s often insulting, it’s so low. With these types of cases, having experience negotiating them is a significant issue. You need to make sure that you have an attorney who’s experienced with this type of negotiation process.
Our job in a personal injury case is to gather evidence and preserve that evidence, investigate, and make sure that we’re in a position to present your case in the best possible light so that we can maximize your recovery. At the Gunnels Injury Law , we are experienced with handling nursing home cases. If you feel that you have seen or are involved in a potential nursing home case, please give us a call early in the process so that we can guide you through the steps to make sure, first, the potential person at risk can be taken care of, and, two, we can do everything that we can to make sure that we preserve that claim and present it in the best possible light as we go through the process.
4) Case Value
When we’re called upon to evaluate a nursing home negligence case, one of the first things our client wants to know is the value of the claim. There’s no way to determine this right at the beginning. In order to get to that point, you need to have information about the extent of the injury and the negligence that caused it. If this is an injury the person can fully recover from, it’s going to have a much less valuable resolution to it than a case where the person is permanently injured as a result of the negligent treatment. Additionally, if the negligence was egregious, the value of the case becomes higher as well.
We have to look through all of those things in order to evaluate the value of your case. Once you have discovered all the facts and information, you’re in a better position to start applying what can be recovered in that situation. We look at two different categories of damages.
The first one is special damages, which generally refers to medical expenses and lost wages. These are often easy to determine. The aspect that’s much harder to determine is called non-economic damages. These are things like pain and suffering and the loss of enjoyment of their life. If your loved one has a very limited amount of life left, those claims may be seen as having more value because the time is so short, so that’s a thing that has to be taken into consideration.
While nursing homes generally have plenty of liability insurance to cover their claims, proving liability in those cases is often very difficult to do. In a nursing home case, you’re not going to have the nursing home admitting that they did something wrong. They’re going to have lawyers that are fighting to defend them. They’re going to have experts that they’ve paid to come in and say that they’ve done nothing wrong. The level of persuasiveness of that defense and how a jury might perceive it has a lot to do with what the case is worth as well.
As you can see, there are a lot of factors that go into determining this case value. My advice is that you immediately consult a lawyer who can start making sure your case is preserved in the best possible manner, so it can be presented and get you the most effective outcome.
Have you or a loved one been the victim of nursing home negligence in Georgia and have questions about our 4 nursing home abuse facts?
Contact the experienced Atlanta nursing home abuse attorneys at Gunnels Injury Law today to arrange a free consultation and case evaluation.
Let our experience work for you.
Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel