Rochester Personal Injury

Rochester is the third-most populous city in New York State. It is located on Lake Ontario and served by several major highways, including I-390 and I-490. Some of its major attractions include the Seabreeze Amusement Park and the Seneca Park Zoo. Unfortunately, car crashes and other accidents happen often in a densely populated area with significant commercial activity. If you were hurt or a loved one was killed, it can take time to recover. Often, medical care and rehabilitation are expensive, and many accident victims are concerned about taking time off from work to heal because they are worried that they will not be able to afford the proper treatment. For many people, bringing a personal injury lawsuit is the best way to be able to afford the costs associated with a serious injury. At DeFrancisco & Falgiatano, LLP, our Rochester personal injury lawyers take seriously the harm done to our clients and work hard to help them recover their damages.

Most personal injury lawsuits require a plaintiff to establish negligence. Put simply, negligence occurs when somebody's actions or omissions fall below the standard of care that they are supposed to follow in a particular situation and thereby injure someone else. The first element that needs to be proven in any negligence lawsuit is duty. You cannot recover damages from another person or business if they did not owe you a duty of care. The second element that must be proven is the defendant’s failure to meet that duty. The failure to meet an established duty must have a causal connection to your injuries. Causation must be both actual and proximate, rather than overly remote.

Certain contexts require proof of additional elements. For example, to establish the right to recover damages in a premises liability lawsuit, a plaintiff will need to show that a defendant had actual or constructive notice. In most cases, it is more straightforward to establish constructive notice than actual notice. A property owner may not admit to knowing about a dangerous condition, but if it was there for long enough, a personal injury attorney in the Rochester area may be able to show that they should have known about it by using reasonable diligence to discover defects in the property that could harm visitors. For example, your attorney may be able to point to surveillance footage that shows that an oil spill that caused your slip and fall in a gas station parking lot was there for more than a day, during which time the gas station owner should have cleaned it up or put up warnings.

There are also certain special rules that apply to injuries sustained on a construction site. Workers who work at heights on non-residential projects are supposed to receive special equipment and protection from owners and contractors. The Scaffold Law gives special protection to workers who are at risk for gravity-related accidents. They are supposed to be given various items of safety equipment to prevent these accidents. If a worker falls because they were not given those pieces of equipment or devices, they may be able to recover damages. Importantly, a Rochester personal injury attorney may be able to recover damages for them even if they were partially to blame for their own accident.

For example, even if a worker failed to notice an obstacle that caused them to trip and fall on a scaffold, if they were not given a crucial piece of safety equipment, the owner or general contractor could be held liable for their damages. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) may inspect construction sites after accidents involving injuries to workers, and its findings may be useful in a construction accident lawsuit for damages. Other than in certain types of construction accidents, plaintiffs' damages may be reduced by an amount equal to their percentage of fault. The jury will look at the evidence and evaluate who was to blame and how much. New York follows the doctrine of pure comparative negligence, which is relatively favorable to plaintiffs.

If you were hurt in Rochester due to someone else's negligence, you should consult an experienced personal injury lawyer. The attorneys at DeFrancisco & Falgiatano, LLP may be able to help you recover the damages to which you are entitled, whether you were hurt in a car accident, an incident of medical malpractice, a slip and fall, or another accident. Call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.