Loss Of Vision In Philadelphia

Suffering vision loss or going blind is one of the most common nightmares that adults experience. For some, though, that nightmare becomes real. In many cases, the loss of vision that you suffer is only because someone else did something negligently or recklessly, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Should this ever happen to you or to someone you love in Philadelphia, you need legal representation to get the compensation you deserve. The personal injury attorneys at Gilman & Bedigian can help.

Causes of Vision Loss in Philadelphia

There are a lot of ways for you to lose your eyesight. Some of them are minor, only affect one eye, are not permanent, and do not cause total blindness. On the other hand, some cases impact both eyes and can cause a total or near-total loss of vision that is permanent.

All of these causes of vision loss, though, fall into one of the following three categories.

1. Long-term damage or exposure that can slowly diminish your ability to see.
2. Direct eye trauma.
3. A brain injury that implicates how your brain receives signals from your eyes.

When either one of these causes has led to your vision loss, you deserve compensation from the person or the people who were ultimately responsible.

Vision Loss from Long-Term Exposure

While traumatic incidents tend to garner more attention as a source of lost vision, long-term exposure and damage likely impact more people in Philadelphia on a yearly basis. Unfortunately, many victims do not realize that they are losing eyesight, or do not connect their loss of vision to something that someone else is doing.

A common situation involving long-term eyesight loss is in the workplace. Workers who have to read in dim light or have to focus on extremely bright objects for hours every day can notice their eyesight slowly deteriorate. Even office workers who have to stare at computer screens all day, every day, can suffer vision loss as the muscles responsible for shifting their focus lose their strength.

Especially when your employer knew or should have known of the risks you stood to face, justice calls for them to cover the costs of your lost eyesight.

Direct Eye Trauma

Loss of vision can also happen if you suffer direct eye trauma. This typically involves an object coming into direct and painful contact with your eye, or a sudden and extreme burst of light penetrating into your retinas and causing damage on the inside.

Direct eye trauma is frequently a harrowing ordeal that can involve large things impaling an eye. However, not all direct eye traumas are so devastating or obvious – flecks of dirt or debris can lodge in your eye and cause damage severe enough to constitute vision loss. Common scenarios include the following.

• Car accidents, where debris from the wreck can hit the eyes of drivers, passengers, or even nearby pedestrians.
• Workplace accidents, where external objects or even chemicals can get in a workers’ eyes and cause lasting damage.

Brain Injuries Can Cause Vision Loss

Some instances of vision loss are not even eye injuries, at all. Instead, they are brain injuries that implicate how your mind is able to receive, compute, and interpret the signals that your eyes are sending to it.

Traumatic brain injuries can cause vision problems if the injury to your brain implicates your occipital lobe. This lobe is at the back of your head and is involved with your eyesight. Because its location is so far away from your eyes, victims of traumatic brain injuries to their occipital lobes are often surprised to have symptoms that impact their eyesight, such as blurred vision, double vision, depth perception issues, light sensitivity, or blindness.

Legal Damages for Vision Loss

Personal injury law in Pennsylvania recognizes that losing your vision is one of the worst injuries that you can suffer. When it happens because of someone else’s negligence or poor conduct, you can recover the following kinds of legal damages in a successful personal injury lawsuit in Philadelphia, in addition to the costs of your current and future medical bills.

• Lost income. Losing your vision is likely to keep you out of work for at least a short period of time while you see doctors, undergo surgeries, or recover from the accident. Those wages that you lost can be recovered in a personal injury claim.
• Lost earning capacity. When the vision loss is severe or permanent, it can keep you out of work, cause you to lose your current job, prevent you from getting another one, or require a change in position or even careers. When that change diminishes your ability to earn a living, the lost earning capacity can be recovered in a lawsuit for your injuries.
• Pain and suffering. Losing your vision can be a physically painful injury, especially if it was caused by direct eye trauma. More likely, though, is your emotional suffering from the loss of eyesight, as this can drastically reduce your ability to live your life the way you want to and do the things you most enjoy doing.

The central element that these things have in common is that they are all things that you have been put through, through no fault of your own. Because you were a victim in an accident that you could not control, you deserve to be compensated for those losses. The personal injury law in Philadelphia is designed to ensure that this happens.

Gilman & Bedigian: Personal Injury Lawyers in Philadelphia

The personal injury lawyers at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian strive to legally represent victims of vision loss in Philadelphia both inside the courtroom and outside of it. With our help, people who have lost eyesight because of someone else’s ill-doing have recovered the compensation they needed and deserved. 

Contact us online to put the personal injury lawyers that you need on your case. With our help, you can protect your financial well-being after the accident that changed your life.