Loss of Hearing

Hearing loss is often gradual. It can be conductive, sensorineural, or mixed. When it’s conductive it involves the outer or middle ear. If it’s sensorineural, it involves the inner ear. If it’s mixed, it will involve a combination of outer, middle and inner ear. Many different factors can contribute to hearing loss, which may present as perceiving muffled speech by others, difficulty understanding words, asking others to talk more loudly, or needing to turn up the volume on your television or other devices. Less tangible effects of hearing loss can include withdrawal from conversations, as well as avoidance of conversations or work or social settings where the hearing loss could prove detrimental. If you have suffered hearing loss as a result of another’s negligence at work or in a healthcare setting, the dedicated Syracuse personal injury attorneys of DeFrancisco & Falgiatano may be able to help you pursue damages.

There are three areas in your ear. Sound waves come through the outer ear, vibrate at the eardrum, and are amplified in the middle ear before traveling to the inner ear and the cochlea. There are thousands of tiny hairs in the nerve cells of the cochlea. They translate sound into electrical signals sent to your brain, and there they’re converted to sound. When loss of hearing is someone else’s fault, it may be possible to recover damages, depending on the situation.

Hearing loss can be the result of an action or extremely loud noise. You can’t always claim damages for hearing loss. In order to establish your entitlement to damages for hearing loss, you’ll often need to bring a personal injury lawsuit. In most cases these lawsuits are based on negligence. That means you’ll have to prove: (1) you were owed a duty of care, (2) breach of duty, (3) causation, and (4) damages. The situation will dictate whether a duty of care was owed, and what actions constituted a breach of that duty. For example, if you are at a construction site doing work, and the employee of a different subcontractor suddenly starts working next to you with a tool so loud ear protection is needed, and you suffer hearing loss as a result, you might be able to bring a third party lawsuit against the other subcontractor. Or, if you are working with a tool of this nature, and the ear plugs you were using were defective such that you suffer hearing loss, you might be able to bring a product liability lawsuit.

Hearing loss can also occur as a result of negligence by a health care provider. However, not every mistake made by a provider is malpractice. In order to prove medical malpractice, you’ll need to prove: (1) you are owed a professional duty of care by a health care provider, (2) the healthcare provider’s breach of the duty of care, (3) causation, and (4) damages.

Hen bringing a medical malpractice lawsuit, you’ll need to show that the defendant health care provider’s actions or omissions deviated from what other reasonable, competent health care providers would have done and that this deviation caused your hearing loss. If you would have suffered hearing loss no matter what the health care provider did, you would not be able to recover damages. For example, if you have ear cancer, and nothing the health care provider did would have altered this outcome, you may not be able to get compensation. Other causes that could lead to compensation for medical malpractice in connection with hearing loss include surgical errors, failure to diagnose or treat conditions, and improper treatment of hearing loss. Hearing loss need not be total for a patient to recover damages for medical malpractice. Even partial loss could be the basis for compensation.

If you suffered a loss of hearing because of someone else’s negligence or medical malpractice in Syracuse, a knowledgeable trial lawyer can assess whether you may be able to recover damages in a lawsuit. DeFrancisco & Falgiatano handles personal injury and medical malpractice lawsuits in Syracuse, as well as Rochester, Lowville, Oswego, Utica, Herkimer, Wampsville, Elmira, Lyons, Oneida, Auburn, Watertown, Binghamton, Canandaigua, Cooperstown, and Ithaca. Please call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.