Louisiana Personal Injury Lawyers

Damage to the spinal cord can interfere with communication between the brain and the rest of the body. Depending on the location and severity of the injury, a person may experience weakness, loss of sensation, chronic pain, impaired mobility, or partial or complete paralysis.

A spinal cord injury can also create needs that extend far beyond the initial hospitalization.

Future medical treatment, rehabilitation, assistive technology, mobility equipment, modifications to a home or vehicle, personal assistance, and reduced earning capacity may all become relevant when evaluating the long-term impact of the injury.

Because those needs can continue for decades, accurately assessing future care can be one of the most important parts of a serious spinal injury claim.

Serious burns can cause damage to the skin, nerves, muscles, and other tissue and may require extensive medical treatment.

Depending on the severity and location of the burns, treatment can include hospitalization, surgery, skin grafting, wound care, rehabilitation, and reconstructive procedures. Scarring, disfigurement, loss of sensation, limited mobility, and psychological effects can continue after the initial wounds have healed.

Burn injuries can result from fires, explosions, electrical incidents, chemicals, defective products, workplace incidents, vehicle crashes, and unsafe property conditions.

Determining what caused the burn is an important part of identifying who may be responsible.

A catastrophic injury is one that produces profound or lasting consequences for the injured person.

Brain injuries, spinal cord damage, amputations, severe burns, organ damage, and other disabling injuries may affect a person's ability to work, move independently, communicate, or perform ordinary activities.

The financial consequences can be equally significant. A person who requires lifelong medical treatment or assistance may face costs that cannot be understood by looking only at the bills accumulated immediately after the accident.

Evaluating a catastrophic injury may require consideration of future medical care, rehabilitation, reduced earning capacity, accessibility needs, assistive equipment, and the effect of permanent limitations on daily life.

That long-term perspective is critical when an injury will continue affecting someone long after a legal claim is resolved.

Drowning incidents can occur in swimming pools, apartment complexes, hotels, recreational facilities, private properties, lakes, and other bodies of water.

When someone survives a near-drowning, oxygen deprivation can cause serious neurological injury and long-term disability. Other incidents are fatal.

Whether another party may be legally responsible depends on how the incident occurred. Potential issues can include inadequate supervision, unsafe property conditions, defective equipment, missing or inadequate barriers, maintenance failures, or other circumstances that contributed to the drowning.

These cases often require a detailed investigation into the property, equipment, safety measures, witnesses, and events immediately before the incident.

When an injury is fatal, Louisiana law recognizes claims arising from both the harm suffered by the person who died and the losses experienced by certain surviving family members.

A wrongful death action allows eligible family members to seek damages they sustained because of the death. A separate survival action preserves certain claims the deceased person could have pursued for injuries suffered before death.

Louisiana law establishes an order for who may bring these claims. The surviving spouse and children have first priority, followed, when the preceding category does not exist, by parents, siblings, and then grandparents.

Because wrongful death and survival actions compensate different losses, determining which claims exist can be an important part of evaluating a fatal injury case.

A survival action concerns the claim the injured person had between the time of the injury and death.

Louisiana Civil Code Article 2315.1 preserves the right to recover damages arising from the injury in favor of specified surviving family members.

That distinction matters when a person survived for some period after being injured.

A single fatal incident can therefore potentially create both a wrongful death action based on the family's losses and a survival action based on the harm suffered by the deceased before death.

Louisiana establishes the following order of eligible survivors:

• The surviving spouse and child or children

• The surviving parents, if there is no surviving spouse or child

• The surviving siblings, if there is no surviving spouse, child, or parent

• The surviving grandparents, if none of the preceding categories survive

The statutory hierarchy is important because someone does not automatically have the right to bring the claim simply because they were close to the person who died.

Under current Article 2315.2, the wrongful death action generally prescribes one year from the death or two years from the day the injury or damage was sustained, whichever is longer. Specialized claims, including medical malpractice deaths, may be governed by different rules.