Personal Injury In Bowie, Maryland

Bowie is a city in the central portion of Maryland and is one of the largest cities in the state. By population, it is the fifth-largest city in Maryland, while it is the state’s third-largest city by land area. Bowie is also the largest city in Prince George’s County. This is all despite being a tiny town up until the 1970s.

With the city’s size, it should come as no surprise that countless accidents happen within the boundaries of Bowie every year, with numerous people suffering injuries because of them. If you ever have the misfortune of being hurt by someone else’s poor decision, mistake, or negligence, filing a personal injury lawsuit can be the best way to ensure you do not have to pay for the cost of your recovery out of your own pocket. The personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian can help.

Bowie

The city of Bowie lies just to the east of Washington, D.C., and had a population of 54,727 during the 2010 census. While this made Bowie the largest city in Prince George’s County, it is not the county seat – the nearby town of Upper Marlboro holds this distinction, despite having barely more than 10% of the population that Bowie does. Bowie’s close proximity to the nation’s capitol, however, gives the area an atmosphere of a much larger city than it is – Bowie is included in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, which boasts more than six million residents and is the sixth-largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

For much of its early history, Bowie was a railroad town. The city came into being because of the development of the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad in the middle of the 19th century, and grew in importance, if not in size, when an electric trolley line connected Washington, D.C. to Annapolis in the early 1900s, stopping at Bowie in between.

Despite the railroads and its location between the major cities of Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Annapolis, Bowie still had barely more than 1,000 residents in 1960. However, the area grew exponentially between then and 1970, when Bowie annexed a nearby residential community. This made the population jump from around 1,000 to around 35,000 in the span of ten years. Soon thereafter, Bowie re-incorporated as a city and has since grown steadily.

Now, Bowie is a city large enough to support a performing arts center that has 800 seats and its own minor league baseball team, the Bowie Baysox. The Baysox are a Double-A minor league affiliate of the local major league team, the Baltimore Orioles, and have been a source of town pride since they moved from Hagerstown to Bowie in 1993.

Bowie has routinely been one of the best places to live in the country, with barely one out of every one hundred of its residents living below the poverty line. CNN even ranked Bowie the 28th-best place to live in 2014.

Personal Injury Claims in Bowie

Even though Bowie is one of the best places in the country to live, accidents still happen there all the time. This is because people everywhere make mistakes or act negligently, and when they do, innocent people can get hurt.

If you become the victim of someone else’s negligence and suffer a severe injury as a result, filing a personal injury claim can be the best way to get the compensation that you need to make a full recovery without putting a severe financial strain on you and your family.

While each case is different, all personal injury lawsuits revolve around your ability to prove four different elements:

The person you are suing owed you a duty of care,
That person breached their duty of care,
That breach caused your injuries, and
You suffered physical or financial damages.

Duty

The law in Bowie and throughout Maryland requires that people act in a reasonably safe way in their interactions with the rest of society. Of course, what is “reasonably safe” depends on the circumstances at play. However, one of the biggest factors in determining what is “reasonably safe” conduct is whether it was foreseeable that it would hurt someone else.

Breach

Once it has been determined what duty of care you were owed at the time of your injuries, you have to show that the person or people who hurt you failed to uphold that duty. Even if their inability to follow through on their duty of care was the result of a mistake or oversight, their negligence can still make them liable for whatever injuries they cause.

Causation

Of course, regardless of how poorly someone else acted, if their conduct was not the cause of your injuries then it would be unfair to hold them liable. The law recognizes this, and requires that you show your injuries were caused by the person you are suing for your personal injury lawsuit to succeed. This means you have to prove two things:

But for the other person’s conduct, you would not have gotten hurt, and
The other person’s conduct was not too far attenuated from your injuries that it would be unfair to hold that person liable for your damages.

Damages

Finally, to prevail in a personal injury lawsuit, you have to show exactly how you were hurt and what you lost in the accident. After all, personal injury cases are all about getting you the compensation that you deserve, so accounting for all of the losses you have suffered from the accident is crucial to succeed. These losses include not only your medical expenses, though – you can also be compensated for the pain and suffering you have been put through from your injuries, as well as the wages that you lost in the past and could lose in the future.

Car Accidents

Perhaps the most common scenario for a personal injury case to start is a car accident. People have a duty of care to operate their vehicles in a reasonably safe manner for the circumstances at hand. However, people drive distracted all the time, and sometimes they even drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. When they do this, they often breach the duty of care that they owe to the other drivers on the road, and if this leads to a car accident that ends with you getting hurt, you could stand to get compensation from them afterward.

Dog Bites

Personal injury cases also start with dog bites, as well. In Bowie and the rest of Maryland, dog owners are held strictly liable for what their dogs do, especially if it leads to someone else getting hurt by a bite. This is important because the victims of dog bites are frequently young children, who can suffer a debilitating injury that impacts the rest of their life after being bitten by a dog.

Premises Liability

The people who live in Bowie and own their own home or business are especially fortunate. However, being a property owner is not all good. There are legal responsibilities that come with owning your own property in Bowie, and failing to uphold those responsibilities can open a landowner up to premises liability.

If you were on someone else’s land – even if you were there as a trespasser, without the landowner’s permission – you have legal rights. The landowner or the person occupying the property has a duty of care to ensure that you are not hurt while on the property. Of course, this duty of care covers more if you are not a trespasser – landowners have to take more care to ensure licensees or invitees are not hurt while on their property – but, contrary to popular belief, landowners have to take certain steps to protect even trespassers who are on their property.

Medical Malpractice

Like all other cities, Bowie has its share of doctors, surgeons, and other medical professionals. Unfortunately, people in the medical profession are still human – they make mistakes just like the rest of us. When they do, though, it can be disastrous for you, if you were the victim. The repercussions that it can have on your long-term health can be debilitating or even fatal.

Like other people, medical professionals owe a duty of care to others to act reasonably under the circumstances. When they fail to do so, though, these professionals can commit medical malpractice and can owe you compensation for the damages that their mistakes or negligence have caused.

Personal Injury Attorneys at Gilman & Bedigian Serve Bowie

Suffering an injury in an accident that you did not cause can be frustrating, especially if it is a serious or debilitating injury. When this happens, it is crucial that you get compensation from the person or people who were ultimately responsible for what you have gone through. This is where the personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian can help. By representing you both in and out of court, we can fight for your legal rights and interests with the insurance companies involved, as well as the people who were responsible for your injuries, thereby ensuring that you get the compensation that you need and deserve. Contact us online or call us at (800) 529-6162.