Personal Injury In Aberdeen, Maryland

Aberdeen, Maryland, is a town in northeastern Maryland, about midway between Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city, and Wilmington, Delaware. Despite its small size, Aberdeen is the largest municipality in Harford County and has a significant presence in both the sport of baseball as well as the military. It is also a popular commuter town for people who work in Baltimore, offering a relatively short commute down Interstate 95 into the city.

Just like other cities in the U.S., though, Aberdeen has its fair share of people who are unlucky and who get hurt in accidents that were caused by someone else. If you are one of these people, the injuries that you suffer can require extensive medical care and attention for you to recover. Unfortunately, this often saddles you with crippling medical debt that can take even more time to get over.

Hiring a personal injury attorney to represent you in court by filing a personal injury claim against the people responsible is the best way to ensure you get the compensation you need and deserve. After all, there is no reason why you should be the one paying for your recovery when you were innocent in the accident. If someone else hurts you, they should be the one to pay the cost of your recovery. This is where the personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian can help.

Aberdeen

With a population of 14,959 during the 2010 census, Aberdeen is the largest city in Harford County, Maryland. Despite this fact, neighboring Bel Air is the county seat. Nevertheless, Aberdeen is a destination for many baseball fans and is the location of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, which employ thousands of local people and brings soldiers from across the country to the area.

When it comes to baseball, Aberdeen has a presence that far outstrips its small size. Baltimore legend Cal Ripken, Jr. grew up in the town and attended Aberdeen High School before becoming a Hall of Fame ballplayer for the local Baltimore Orioles. After retiring in 2001, Ripken, Jr. bought one of the Orioles’ lower-level minor league baseball teams, the Utica Blue Sox, moved them to Aberdeen in 2002 and renamed them the Aberdeen IronBirds. The team, which is in the New York-Penn League at the Short-Season Single-A level, is the proving grounds for recent college draftees, freshly graduated or signed and looking for experience after the college season. Because it brings in college players with more talent and experience than other low-level minor league teams, Aberdeen was where many Oriole stars got their start. Baseball is such a large part of the Aberdeen culture that the home field for the IronBirds – Ripken Stadium – can seat 6,300 people or nearly half of Aberdeen’s population.

In addition to being the home to a huge baseball culture, Aberdeen is also the location of the Aberdeen Proving Ground, an Army facility with nearly 2,000 residents. Built in 1917, towards the end of World War I, the Aberdeen Proving Ground has served primarily as a testing facility for chemical weapons since it opened. While the area is also used to test mechanical aspects of Army equipment – like tank engines or Humvee suspensions – chemical testing still occurs. The result of such long-term biological strain on the area has been widespread contamination. The contamination has been so extreme that the Aberdeen Proving Ground has been added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List of the most hazardous waste sites in the country in 1990.

Claims for Injuries in Aberdeen

Accidents happen everywhere. Unfortunately, Aberdeen is no exception. Even if you were minding your own business, the negligence or incompetence of others can result in you getting hurt if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because you were completely innocent, you should be compensated for your losses, even if they were just because someone else made a mistake and it was all an accident. This is why Maryland’s personal injury law exists – so you can be compensated by the people who caused your injuries.

While every injury is different, personal injury law in Maryland requires four different elements for you to be successful in a lawsuit:

1. Someone else held a duty of care to keep you out of harm’s way,
2. That person breached that duty of care by failing to uphold it,
3. That breach caused your injuries or financial losses, and
4. You were, in fact, hurt or damaged in some way.

Duty to Act Reasonably Prudent

Maryland law generally requires that everyone acts like a reasonably prudent person whenever their conduct could foreseeably cause someone else to get hurt. While there are exceptions to this rule, they depend on the exact circumstances surrounding the accident that caused your injury and your relationship to the person or people who caused it.

Breaching the Duty

If your injuries happened because someone else had a duty of care but then did not do what it required, you could be entitled to compensation for your injuries. This is the case even if the other person breached their duty of care accidentally or negligently, rather than on purpose.

Causation

Even if someone else had a legal responsibility – a duty of care – to keep you out of harm’s way and they then breached that responsibility, it does not automatically mean that they will have to compensate you for your losses. Instead, you still have to show that their conduct was the cause of your injuries. This involves two different aspects:

1. But for the other person’s conduct, you would not have gotten hurt, and
2. The other person’s conduct was not so far removed from your injuries that it would be unfair to hold them liable.

Legal Damages

Because personal injury cases are all about getting you the compensation that you deserve for your injuries, one of the most important aspects of a personal injury lawsuit is proving exactly how badly you were hurt. Together, all of the losses that you have had to deal with are your legal damages. They include everything from your medical bills to your lost wages and earning potential, as well as the pain and suffering that you and your family have gone through because of your injuries.

Truck and Car Accidents

Like most other places in the U.S., one of the most common personal injury situations in Aberdeen involves a car accident. Whether it happened on I-95 or Route 40, all drivers have a duty of care to drive reasonably safely. Unfortunately, they rarely take this responsibility seriously, driving while drunk or distracted incredibly often. When this happens and it causes a crash that hurts you, they could be liable for your injuries.

Environmental Injuries in Aberdeen

The Aberdeen Proving Ground is such a hazardous area that it is ripe for an environmental injury to the residents and workers in Aberdeen. Chemical and biological agents are known for seeping into water sources and getting into the home, slowly infecting people with deadly diseases as they unknowingly ingest dangerous toxins. When this happens, you deserve compensation for your losses.

Premises Liability

Business and landowners have a duty of care to keep people safe whenever they are on their premises. If they fail to uphold this duty of care, they can face premises liability for your injuries. In Aberdeen, this is especially important if you go to a baseball game, where foul balls, flying bats, and other dangerous conditions can result in significant and even life-altering injuries.

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice, while rare, is one of the most serious situations for a personal injury. In Aberdeen, there are dozens of medical professionals that practice medicine. When they do, they owe their patients a duty of care to provide reasonably adequate medical care. If they do not uphold this duty of care, their breach could be so egregious that it amounts to medical malpractice.

These cases are often some of the most serious injuries that you can suffer. Your body was likely already compromised when you went to the doctor, so their mistake could exacerbate the original issue and lead to complications that make things even worse.

Gilman & Bedigian: Personal Injury Attorneys in Aberdeen

Accidents can come in all shapes and sizes in Aberdeen, Maryland. While some are minor, others can change your life with permanent debilitations or even lead to fatal injuries.

If you were victimized by someone else’s negligence and this caused you to suffer significant injuries, it is crucially important for you to get compensated for your losses. Without financial compensation, you could find yourself paying for your medical bills and your other losses out of your own pocket, which can be especially frustrating after recovering from a serious injury.

This is where the personal injury attorneys at Gilman & Bedigian can help. By serving as your legal representative both in and out of court, we can ensure you get the financial compensation you need to make a full recovery. Contact our law office online or call us at (800) 529-6162 for the help you need.