Personal Injury In Brunswick, Maryland

Brunswick is a town in Frederick County, Maryland, near the state’s borders with Virginia to the south, and West Virginia to the west. Brunswick was once a bustling city, closely attached to the railroads that ran through the mountains to the west. Now it serves as a residential home for many of the workers not only in Frederick, Maryland but also Washington, D.C., with commuters utilizing the still-existing railroad from the town into the nation’s capital.

Just like all of the other towns in Maryland, Brunswick is the site of many life-altering accidents. These accidents can lead to significant or even fatal injuries and can happen to people who were not the cause of the accident happening in the first place. When this happens, it can be incredibly unfair to the person who gets hurt because there was nothing that they did to deserve their injuries and often had no way of avoiding it either.

If this happens to you or a loved one in Brunswick, you need legal representation. By hiring the personal injury attorneys at Gilman & Bedigian, you can rely on them to enforce your legal rights to compensation by fighting for you both in and out of the courtroom. Getting this compensation from the person or the people who were ultimately responsible for the accident that caused your injuries can mean the difference between being able to make a full recovery or settling for something less.

Brunswick

Brunswick is a town in central Maryland right along the Potomac River, the state’s southern border with Virginia. During the 2010 Census, Brunswick had a population of 5,870, making it one of the larger towns in the county.

Since Brunswick’s founding in 1728, it has relied on the river and, later, on the railroad lines that ran alongside it. When the town was incorporated in 1890, it was merely a preliminary step for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s land acquisition and their subsequent development of a rail yard and hub inside the town’s boundaries. The B&O’s presence in Brunswick from the 1890s into the 1950s was so intense that Brunswick was, in essence, a company town.

When the railroad fizzled after World War II, Brunswick stagnated for a short period of time before recovering in the 1980s with the sudden growth of Washington, D.C. Despite the fact that the District of Columbia is more than 60 miles away to the southeast, Brunswick’s already existing railroad infrastructure helped bring the Maryland Area Regional Commuter (MARC) railroad into the area in 1984. The Brunswick Line of the MARC train runs 74 miles from Union Station in Washington, D.C. all the way out to Martinsburg, West Virginia. Despite this considerable distance, the high speeds of the MARC trains allow commuters to reach Washington, D.C. in approximately an hour, allowing towns along the route, including Brunswick, to serve as commuter towns for workers there.

The close affinity between the town and the railroads is even memorialized in the town’s seal, which prominently depicts a train, driving through the wooded mountains.

Personal Injury Claims in Brunswick

Despite being a commuter town, Brunswick still sees numerous personal injuries every year because of an accident. These are all governed by Maryland’s personal injury law, which requires accident victims to show four things in order to be successful. These are:

1. That the person being sued owed the victim a duty of care,
2. That person breached their duty of care,
3. The breach caused the victim to get hurt, and
4. The victim suffered legal damages, as a result.

Duty of Care

In Maryland, people are typically under the legal obligation to act like reasonably prudent people whenever it is foreseeable that their conduct will cause someone else to get hurt. This is the duty of care. By not following through on this responsibility to you, other people could face legal liability if their conduct results in you getting hurt.

Breach

Failing to uphold the duty of care is a breach. Importantly, in Maryland, it does not matter whether the duty of care was breached intentionally or by accident – in either case, it can lead to legal liability on the part of the person committing the breach and compensation for the injured victim.

Causation

However, just because someone else had a duty of care to uphold and then they breached it does not mean that they are automatically liable for any injuries that you suffered as a result. Instead, the personal injury law in Maryland requires that you show that the other person’s breach of their duty of care and your losses were cause and effect. This has two elements to it:

1. You would not have gotten hurt, but for the other person’s breach of their duty of care, and
2. The chain of cause and effect between the other person’s breach of their duty of care and your injuries is not so long that it would be unfair to hold them responsible.

Legal Damages

Because the whole point of a personal injury lawsuit in Maryland is to get accident victims the compensation they need to recover, one of the crucial elements of every case is showing how much you have lost because of the accident. These legal damages go far beyond just the cost of your medical bills, though. In Maryland, you can get compensation for:

• Property damage suffered in the accident,
• Medical bills that you have already accumulated in your recovery,
• Medical expenses that you are likely to have if you will need treatment over the long term,
• Pain and suffering that you and your family have gone through,
• Wages that you have lost because of your treatment and recovery, and
• Potential income that you have lost because of any disabilities resulting from the accident.

Car Accidents in Brunswick

The most common type of personal injury situation in Brunswick is a car accident. Even though the town has long survived with the railroads that run through it, nearly every adult in Brunswick drives a car, so it is only a matter of time before a crash happens inside the town’s limits. These drivers all have a duty of care to keep others on the road safe through their reasonably prudent driving, but that does not mean they all take that responsibility seriously. In fact, poor driving habits like texting, speeding or driving while under the influence all cause accidents and serious personal injuries. If this happens to you, you could be entitled to legal compensation.

Dog Bites in Brunswick

Another common source of a personal injury case in Brunswick is a dog bite. These situations are different from many other personal injury cases, though, because dog owners are held strictly liable for the actions of their pets. This means that liability will be imputed to the owner if their dog bites someone, even though the owner might not have done anything wrong on their own. This makes dog bite cases easier for the victim to win because of many of the elements in a personal injury case, it is not necessary to show that it was the fault of the dog owner that you were hurt. This is especially important for dog bite cases because most of the victims are children, who will likely need to recover more than adults would because they face the potential for long-term debilitations from their injuries.

Premises Liability

If you slip and fall while on someone else’s property because of a dangerous condition on their premises, you may be entitled to compensation from the property owner or operator. This is because property owners in Brunswick owe a duty of care to the people who visit them on their premises. What this duty of care entails, though, depends on your relationship with the property owner. If you were on the premises for the owner’s financial benefit – like if you were shopping in a grocery store – they have to take extra precautions to ensure your safety. On the other hand, if you were trespassing on their property when you got hurt, the duty of care that you were owed shrinks considerably but not completely.

Gilman & Bedigian: Personal Injury Attorneys in Brunswick

If you or a loved one has gotten hurt in an accident in Brunswick, you should investigate your legal options. By filing a lawsuit, you could stand to gain compensation for all of your losses suffered in the accident, which can make a huge difference in the years following the tragic event that changed your life.

This is where the personal injury attorneys at the Maryland law offices of Gilman & Bedigian can help. By working as your legal representative, we can pursue your interests and protect your legal rights by advocating for you both inside the courtroom and outside of it. With our help, you can get the compensation that you need to recover from injuries and the pain and the suffering that you did not deserve. Contact us online or call us at (800) 529-6162 for a free consultation.