After a spinal cord injury, you may find your entire life changing. Not only can it mean immense financial costs, but you may also find new limits on all your activities, including things you once took for granted. Furthermore, it can change your ability to work and generate a reasonable income.
When someone else’s negligence leads to your spinal cord injury, you may recover compensation for those losses. Contact our Tampa spinal cord injury lawyers at Holliday Karatinos Law Firm today for your free consultation, and let us seek the compensation you need to recover and regain as much independence as possible.
Holliday Karatinos Law Firm: We Make Your Tampa Spinal Cord Injury Claim Our Personal Mission
The costs associated with a spinal cord injury can grow exponentially, leaving you unsure of what to do next or how to handle those losses.
At Holliday Karatinos Law Firm, we help our clients get a closer look at the compensation they really deserve for the injuries they may have sustained due to another party’s negligence.
Personalized Support
At Holliday Karatinos Law Firm, we make sure our clients receive the personalized support they need, whether they suffered a spinal cord injury in a big truck accident, a car accident, or a slip and fall. We consider every case highly important, and we understand the challenges of dealing with the insurance company following a devastating spinal cord injury. Each client receives personalized support and understanding geared toward his individual needs.
Extensive Resources
You may appreciate the small-firm feel and personalized support. Still, when you have extensive injuries like a spinal cord injury and need to go up against the big names in insurance, including companies like Geico, Allstate, or Liberty Mutual, you need a firm with the resources necessary to handle those challenges.
At Holliday Karatinos Law Firm, we have the resources necessary to go up against the big names in insurance and help our clients continue to fight for the compensation they deserve.
Easy Access
Getting in touch with a lawyer can make a huge difference in your spinal cord injury claim. At Holliday Karatinos Law Firm, we aim to make it as easy as possible. We can connect with you in person or online, allowing you to get the support you need from anywhere. We also start with a free consultation so that you can feel confident that you have chosen the right law firm for your claim. Furthermore, we accept cases on a contingent fee basis, which means you do not pay until we win.
Are you ready to start your Tampa spinal cord injury claim? Contact Holliday Karatinos Law Firm today.
Compensation Following a Tampa Spinal Cord Injury: Breaking Down Your Rights
A Tampa spinal cord injury can leave you with substantial losses. You may find yourself dealing with paralysis or lowered function and mobility below the site of the injury, depending on whether you suffered a complete or incomplete spinal cord injury. That paralysis can prove permanent. Furthermore, spinal cord injuries often lead to considerable financial challenges.
At Holliday Karatinos Law Firm, we cannot guarantee the compensation you will recover for your spinal cord injury claim. We can, however, help you look at the losses you may have sustained and put together a comprehensive injury claim that will lay out the difficulties you have faced and the compensation you deserve.
What Did Your Medical Costs Look Like Following Your Tampa Spinal Cord Injury?
Medical costs rise exponentially in the first year following the accident for many spinal cord injury victims. Not only do you have to worry about your initial hospitalization and emergency medical care, but you may also spend a great deal of time in a rehabilitation facility, where you will receive an ongoing high standard of care designed to help you during those early recovery stages.
Furthermore, you may need considerable durable medical equipment to help you get around, including a wheelchair. You may have medical equipment at home, like a hospital bed, making it easier for you to take care of yourself and maintain independence.
As you recover, you may work with an occupational therapist who will provide you with tools to help you maintain your independence. Occupational therapists often provide assistance that will help spinal cord injury victims learn how to adapt to life in a wheelchair or how to use assistive devices to help maintain independence and functionality.
However, all of those medical needs can lead to considerable ongoing medical bills. As you put together your spinal cord injury claim, your lawyer will look at those bills and use them to help lay out the compensation you deserve.
How Much Work Did You Have to Miss Because of Your Spinal Cord Injury? Did Your Injury Prevent You From Getting Back to Work?
The long road to recovery many spinal cord injury victims face can sometimes feel insurmountable. You may need to focus fully on your recovery for the first several months after the accident. Even in cases where you can continue to work from home on a part-time basis, you may find that you cannot work full-time, leading to a considerable dip in your income.
You may have the right to claim compensation for those lost wages as part of your claim, making it easier for you to pay your bills and manage your other expenses during your recovery.
In addition, many spinal cord injury victims find that their injuries permanently prevent them from returning to work after the accident. That inability to work may mean that they must pursue employment in a new field or, in some cases, that they cannot work at all. Working with a Tampa personal injury lawyer can make calculating the value of that lost earning potential easier.
How Did Your Spinal Cord Injury Affect Your Life?
A spinal cord injury can lead to substantial physical and emotional struggles. Many spinal cord injury victims find that they need to reshape their lives due to their injuries. They may miss out on activities they once enjoyed or have to give up hobbies they loved. Spinal cord injuries can also cause a substantial loss of independence, which can feel catastrophic for some spinal cord injury victims.
Talk to your lawyer about your spinal cord injury’s impact on you. Discuss both your physical and emotional struggles. Your lawyer can then include those damages as part of a comprehensive spinal cord injury claim.
Tampa Spinal Cord Injuries: Understanding the Basics
On average, more than 800 people in Florida suffer spinal cord injuries each year, based on an incidence rate of 40 per million members of the population. Men suffer spinal cord injuries at a higher rate than women.
Spinal cord injuries can occur throughout Florida for a number of reasons.
- Falls make up around 309 Florida hospitalizations for spinal cord injuries each year. Both major falls, including situations like construction accidents, and minor falls, including slip and fall accidents, can lead to spinal cord injury.
- Around 271 Florida hospitalizations occur for spinal cord injuries in motor vehicle accidents each year. Motor vehicle accidents often involve substantial force, which means they have the potential to cause immense injury, including spinal cord injuries.
- Assaults cause around 46 hospitalizations in Florida for spinal cord injuries each year. In some cases, the owner of the property where the assault occurred may bear liability for those injuries, particularly if the property owner failed to provide adequate security.
Regardless of the cause of a spinal cord injury, working with a lawyer can make it easier to determine how much compensation you may deserve.
Protecting Yourself After a Tampa Spinal Cord Injury
After a Tampa spinal cord injury, you may have a team of medical professionals guiding you through your recovery, helping you increase your overall strength and mobility and increasing the odds that you will gain more independence over time.
Just like you rely on those medical professionals to help guide you through your physical recovery, you may need to rely on a lawyer to help guide you through the financial part of your recovery.
- Get in touch with a Tampa spinal cord injury lawyer at Holliday Karatinos Law Firm as soon as you can after your accident. The longer you wait to connect with a lawyer, the more difficult it can prove to seek the compensation you need for your injuries. A lawyer can help identify the losses you have faced and seek evidence related to your accident.
- Keep a copy of all medical bills as they come in. Make a note of the ones you have already paid and the ones that still require payment.
- Document the course of your recovery. Make notes about the challenges you have faced and any setbacks you may have along the way. Keeping a journal can help you more easily lay out what suffering you may have faced.
- Follow your medical care provider’s instructions. Try not to skip appointments or put off needed procedures or therapy sessions.
Dealing with the aftermath of a spinal cord injury can prove incredibly frustrating. Handling the claim on your own may make it more difficult for you to get the compensation you deserve. Contact Holliday Karatinos Law Firm for help on your journey.
Tampa Spinal Cord Injury Claim FAQ
Does The Party That Caused My Tampa Spinal Cord Injury Have to Pay for My Medical Bills?
From your initial trip to the emergency room or the Florida Spinal Cord Injury Center through your time in Tampa General Rehabilitation Hospital, you may find your medical bills adding up quickly. When you file a spinal cord injury claim, you may have the right to include compensation for the many bills you have faced, but that will not mean that the liable party has to pay those bills directly.
Furthermore, in many cases, you may find that you have ongoing medical bills for the rest of your life, including tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs each year.
As the party receiving medical care, you will need to make arrangements to take care of the cost of medical treatment, including using your health insurance to cover the cost of treatment. If you suffered a spinal cord injury in a car or big truck accident, you might have the right to use your Florida PIP insurance to cover part or all medical treatment costs.
What Happens if the Cost to Treat My Tampa Spinal Cord Injuries Exceeds the Protection Offered by the Liable Party’s Insurance Plan?
In many cases, you may find that the cost of treating a spinal cord injury will go beyond the protection offered by the liable party’s insurance plan. Treatment for a spinal cord injury may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first year after the injury alone. After that, you may continue to face ongoing medical care expenses.
In many cases, working with a lawyer can help you find additional areas of protection offered by the liable party’s insurance plan. Furthermore, a lawyer can fight to help you get more compensation for your losses.
How Long Do I Have to Prove My Right to File a Spinal Cord Injury Claim in Tampa?
According to Florida law, you have up to four years after your spinal cord injury date to file a claim that will allow you to pursue compensation for those damages. By talking to a lawyer soon after your injury, you can begin the claim process and make sure that you do not miss out on essential deadlines that could prevent you from getting the full compensation you deserve.
Contact A Tampa Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer Today
Dealing with a spinal cord injury claim on your own could mean you miss out on the compensation you really deserve. At Holliday Karatinos Law Firm, we fight to help our clients maximize the compensation they can recover for their injuries. Contact us today at (813) 868-1887 for your free consultation.
Client Testimonial
"Attorney James Holliday is the best attorney I have ever worked with. I went to him after an auto accident and I was impressed with his knowledge of the situation and judgement on how to proceed. In the end, Mr. Holliday was able to obtain full compensation. He was also a pleasure to work with."
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Barb C.
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