Monroe County Personal Injury

Monroe County is made up of 1,367 square miles located along Lake Ontario's southern shore in the state of New York. Rochester is its county seat. Major highways in Monroe County include I-90, I-590, I-490, and I-390. Most people in Monroe County and elsewhere don't have enough saved up in case of catastrophic or fatal injuries. Medical bills can be very expensive — especially if you're unable to work because of injuries. If you have been harmed due to someone else's careless or negligent conduct, an experienced Monroe County personal injury attorney can help you determine the strength of your claim.

Accident victims are often surprised by how quickly medical bills and bills for rehabilitation and therapy add up. Often they need to take time off work to recover or for medical procedures. They may even need medical equipment or alterations to their homes in the case of catastrophic injuries. You can sue the parties responsible for your injuries if negligent behavior led to your harm.

In most injury cases, you will need to prove negligence. This means you will need to show: (1) the defendant owed you a duty to use reasonable care, (2) breach of the duty to use reasonable care, (3) causation, and (4) actual damages.

Negligent drivers often cause car accidents. All drivers owe others a duty to use reasonable care when operating their cars on the road. They may breach the duty of reasonable care in many different ways, including by drunk driving, texting while driving, speeding, weaving, failing to obey traffic signals, and tailgating. For example, if a driver is texting while driving out of his driveway onto the road, and therefore T-bones your car, it is likely that a jury would find that there was a breach of the duty to use reasonable care. There needs to be a causal relationship between the breach of the duty to use reasonable care and the injuries in order for you to recover damages, and a seasoned personal injury attorney in Monroe County can help you prove that relationship.

Damages may be reduced by your comparative negligence. In New York, if a jury determines you are partly or fully at fault for a car accident, it assigns a percentage of fault, and your damages are reduced in relationship to your accountability for the accident.

Sometimes, however, there is another party besides a negligent driver to blame for an accident. New York imposes dram shop liability on drinking establishments that serve alcohol to somebody who's already visibly drunk. The New York General Obligations Law section 11-101 provides that it is unlawful for drinking establishments to give alcohol to people who the server can see is intoxicated. Visible signs of intoxication include slurring, blood-shot eyes or falling over.

There are other situations in which other elements may need to be established, and a knowledgeable Monroe County personal injury lawyer can guide you through the process. For example, if you are injured on another's property, you may be able to recover damages in a premises liability lawsuit. However, you would need to prove that the property owner or occupier had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition that actually and legally caused your injuries. Often property owners refuse to acknowledge that they actually knew about a dangerous condition beforehand. However, you may be able to show constructive notice by showing that the danger was there for so long that a reasonable property owner would have seen it and either repaired the condition or warned of the problems.

Different laws apply to construction accidents. Although one of the state Labor Laws tracks traditional negligence, there are other Labor Laws that provide for absolute liability. For example, the Scaffold Law requires that workers who work at high elevations, such as on scaffolding, get particular protections such as safety equipment against gravity-related accidents. If you are injured because you weren't given the safety equipment required under the Scaffold Law, you may be able to recover damages even if you were partially to blame for the accident.

Accidents are often very stressful for those who are injured. You may be worried about how you will pay your bills, and you may be in quite a bit of pain. If you were injured by another person or a business, an experienced personal injury lawyer can help. DeFrancisco & Falgiatano represents accident victims across Monroe County. Please call us at 833-200-2000 or contact us via our online form.