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Allegany County is a county in Maryland, located in the middle of the state’s western panhandle. Because of its location at the base of the Appalachian Mountains, Allegany County is not highly populated, with only a couple of cities of significant size. However, its location has made Allegany County the site of numerous events of historical importance and its close proximity to many of the mountains in the Appalachians give it a picturesque and natural feel, along with many areas of natural beauty that attract tourists from around the region.
If you or someone you love gets hurt in Allegany County though, your case will go through the Allegany County Courthouse in Cumberland, the county seat. This courthouse is one of the most impressive buildings in the area, with numerous significant architectural aspects to it, making it an interesting site to pursue a personal injury claim in Maryland.
Allegany County
Allegany County is the second-most western county in Maryland, far out on the state’s western panhandle. It borders Pennsylvania, on the north along the Mason-Dixon Line, and West Virginia, on the south. From east to west, it stretches along Interstate 68 from the Maryland towns of Bellegrove, in the east, to Frostburg, in the west. In all, Allegany County has a land area of 430 square miles and had a population of 75,087 during the 2010 census, giving it a population density of 174 per square mile.
Allegany County’s location at the base of the Appalachian Mountains gives it easy access to many picturesque peaks. Included within the confines of Allegany County are Dans Mountain and Warrior Mountain, which are both more than 2,000 feet tall. This includes the Allegheny Front, a steep portion of the Allegheny Mountains that are, themselves, a part of the Appalachian Mountain Range. The steepness of the Allegheny Front is so sheer that the two largest cities in Allegany County, Cumberland, and Frostburg, are only eight miles apart but more than 1,500 feet apart, vertically.
Personal Injury in Allegany County
Just like in other counties of Maryland, personal injuries can happen in Allegany County, as well. Oftentimes, these injuries are the result of an accident that was caused by someone else. When this is the case, you or your injured loved one can enforce your legal rights to be compensated for your injuries by the person or the people who were ultimately responsible by filing a personal injury lawsuit.
In many cases, the accident that caused your injuries stem from one of the following sources.
Accidents on Interstate 68
Car crashes are some of the most common kinds of accidents that lead to a personal injury situation in the U.S., and in Allegany County, too. All drivers on the road owe a duty of care to others to drive their car in a reasonably safe manner, because of how foreseeable it is for someone else to get hurt if they drive dangerously.
On Interstate 68, though, it seems like very few people take that duty of care seriously. Other people drive too fast all the time, weaving in and out of traffic with reckless abandon. Speeding and weaving, however, are only two of the many different ways for someone to drive unreasonably. Some of the others involve tailgating, driving while distracted or drunk, or even driving too slowly for the conditions.
Unfortunately, anytime someone else drives dangerously, you can be the one who ends up getting hurt. Worse, if the accident happens on Interstate 68, with high speeds and numerous trucks on the road, the injuries that you could suffer are likely to be far more devastating than those that you would expect if the accident happened on the back roads of Allegany County. You could face life-altering injuries that put you out of work for weeks or months and that take tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, each of which strains your financial security and leaves you in desperate need of compensation from the people responsible.
Western Maryland Regional Medical Center
Another source of many of the personal injuries that are suffered in Allegany County is the Western Maryland Regional Medical Center. Just like drivers owe you a duty of care to drive reasonably safely, doctors and other healthcare professionals owe you a duty of care to provide reasonable medical care. If they fail to uphold this duty of care, doctors, nurses, or even the hospitals they work for can be guilty of medical malpractice.
Even though medical malpractice is much less common than other kinds of accidents that result in personal injuries, like car accidents, the injuries that malpractice causes are frequently far more severe. Many of them even turn out to be fatal or lead to permanent disabilities. This is because medical malpractice typically comes from the workings of internal medicine or surgeries that implicate complex aspects of the human body and that involve numerous different kinds of drugs that can react poorly with one another or that create an allergy that makes things even worse.
Many of the instances of medical malpractice in Allegany County come from the Western Maryland Regional Medical Center, in large part because of the hospital’s sheer size. The Medical Center has 313 beds, and serves numerous patients every year, with an estimated 7,500 surgeries happening every year and nearly 53,000 emergency room visits. With so many patients, mistakes are bound to happen. Even if the source of medical malpractice is just negligence or a simple mistake, that does not mean that you should not be compensated for your injuries.
Injuries in Rocky Gap State Park and Green Ridge State Forest
Allegany County is known throughout the region for its natural beauty, and the Rocky Gap State Park and the Green Ridge State Forest are just two of the most popular places to enjoy the outdoors in the area. However, accidents in remote areas like these pose a significant threat to those who venture into them and can cause injuries that lead to severe disabilities for years after the terrible event.
Just because you get hurt in a remote and seemingly unsupervised are of Allegany County, though, does not mean that you cannot enforce your legal rights to compensation for injuries suffered in accidents that you did not cause. If you get hurt in a fall or other accident while on someone else’s property, you can be compensated for your losses through the law of premises liability, even if the “owner” of the property is Allegany County or some other government agency.
This is important for injuries that are suffered in the Rocky Gap State Park, which is managed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and the Green Ridge State Forest, which is managed by the Maryland Forest Service. If the accident that caused your injury was the kind of accident that could have been easily prevented by one of these governmental agencies, you should be compensated for their oversight because, without their negligence, you would not have gotten hurt.
Allegany County’s Courthouse
Personal injury lawsuits are a type of civil claim. The vast majority of these are initially filed at the county level.
If you or someone you love suffers a personal injury in an accident in Allegany County, the case will go before the Allegany County Courthouse in the county seat of Cumberland. This court is a part of Maryland’s Fourth District, which also comprises Garrett County, to the west, and Washington County, to the east, and is located at 30 Washington Street in Cumberland.
Two judges preside in Alleghany County Courthouse, along with a family law magistrate and a child support magistrate. Personal injury cases will go before one of the judges in the court. While there is no designated parking for the courthouse, there are numerous metered parking spots along the street around the building that have served the needs of the court for years.
Gilman & Bedigian: Personal Injury Attorneys Serving Allegany County
Accidents happen in Allegany County as often as they happen anywhere else in the United States, and the victims who suffer from them are just as in need of financial compensation as any other. This is why the personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian strive to serve accident victims throughout Allegany County in their pursuit of justice. By legally representing you or someone you love after a life-altering injury, we can fight for your legal rights and interests both in and out of the courtroom.
If you or someone you love has been hurt in an accident that was caused by someone else in Allegany County, contact our law office by calling us at (800) 529-6162 or by contacting us online for a free consultation.