Personal Injury In Easton, Maryland

Easton is a city on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, located on the eastern side of Chesapeake Bay. It is the largest city and the county seat of Talbot County, Maryland, and has been experiencing rapid growth over the past few decades that have established Easton as one of the region’s most bustling cities.

One thing that Easton has in common with the other cities in the state of Maryland, though, is that accidents can happen within its boundaries. Unfortunately, if someone else acts carelessly or negligently, they are not always the ones who suffer the consequences of their actions – sometimes innocent bystanders get hurt, as well.

If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time when an accident occurs, you could find yourself saddled with serious personal injuries that take time and money to recover from. This can be frustrating when you know that you were not the cause of your injuries and that there was very little that you could have done to avoid them. When this happens, it is crucial to have lawyers on your side who can file a personal injury claim to enforce your legal rights to compensation. This is where the personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian can help.

Easton, Maryland

Easton is a sizeable city on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to the east of the Chesapeake Bay. With a population of 15,945 during the 2010 census, there are estimates that it had grown to include 16,617 residents by 2015, making it one of the larger cities on the Eastern Shore.

The town of Easton occupies a unique and strained position in the history of the United States. Its location on the Eastern Shore put it in a tricky position during the Civil War. Despite being in Maryland, Easton is slightly south of Washington, D.C., resulting in lots of internal conflicts between Confederate and Union sympathizers. The rest of Maryland’s Eastern Shore faced similar issues during the period. The conflicting attitudes remain even today. Easton is the site of a statute erected in 1916 to honor fallen Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

The secession attitude prevails in Easton in other ways, as well. Many in the Eastern Shore have long wanted to secede from the rest of the state, with the latest official movement to do so coming as recently as 1998.

Politics aside, Easton has a long tradition of being a baseball town. Between the first and the second World Wars, the Eastern Shore Baseball League was a staple of the area. While only a minor league, numerous Hall of Fame ballplayers passed through the league on their way to the majors. Many of them played for one of the four teams that called Easton home at some point during the league’s existence. Now, though, Easton does not have a professional sports team within its town boundaries, despite its rapid growth in the past few decades – it has more than doubled in size since 1980.

Personal Injury Claims in Easton

Accidents can happen anywhere, and Easton is no exception. Whether in the form of a car accident or something else, people act negligently all the time, and if that hurts you or someone you love, you should seek the compensation you are legally entitled to receive by filing a personal injury lawsuit.

In order to succeed in a personal injury case, there are four things that you will need to show, regardless of the situation that led to you getting hurt. These are:

1. Someone else owed you a duty of care to keep you free from harm,
2. That person breached their duty of care,
3. That breach was the cause of your injuries, and
4. You suffered legal damages as a result.

Here is what each one of these elements means.

Duty of Care

Generally, Maryland personal injury law requires you to show that the person or people you are suing owed you a duty of care. Typically, the duty of care is a legal obligation to act like a reasonably prudent person whenever it is foreseeable that your conduct could hurt someone else. In some situations, however, the duty of care might require more or less exercise of caution.

Breaching the Duty of Care

Unfortunately, there are numerous situations where people do not take their duty of care very seriously. If someone else does not uphold their legal obligations to keep you safe, then they have breached their duty of care and can be held liable for your injuries if their breach was the cause of your suffering. Importantly, this is the case even if they only breached their duty of care accidentally.

Causation

Even if someone else owed you a duty of care and then breached it, if your injuries were not the result of that breach then it would be unfair to expect that person to compensate you for your losses. This is why Maryland requires you to show that the breach of the duty of care was the cause of your injuries by proving two things:

1. But for the other person’s breach of their duty of care, you would not have gotten hurt, and
2. The breach of the duty of care and your injuries were not so remote from each other that it would be unfair to link the two together in a chain of cause and effect.

Legal Damages

Because Maryland personal injury law is all about getting you the compensation that you deserve, showing exactly how much you should be compensated is crucial. This means proving all of the ways that you were hurt, and how much you lost.

Luckily, this goes beyond just your medical expenses. In Maryland, you can be compensated for your lost wages and earning potential, as well as the cost of the pain and suffering that you and your family have gone through because of the accident.

Car Accidents

One of the most common situations to result in a personal injury claim in the U.S. and in Easton is a car accident. Drivers have a duty of care to drive reasonably safely, but they rarely seem to take this seriously. Distracted drivers who do not pay attention to the road are just one of the countless examples of someone else failing to uphold their duty of care towards you. If this breach of the duty of care causes you to get hurt, you could be entitled to legal compensation.

Dog Bites in Easton

With so many residents in the city of Easton, it is not surprising that there are so many dogs, too. Unfortunately, where there are dogs, there is the chance for a serious dog bite, as well. Even though Maryland personal injury law holds owners strictly liable for the actions of their dogs – after all, you cannot sue the dog for biting you – it can still be an uphill battle to get dog owners to pay for the damages their pet causes.

Premises Liability

Property owners in Easton owe a duty of care to anyone who visits their property. If they breach this duty of care by not fixing dangerous conditions on their grounds, they could find themselves facing premises liability for the damages that they cause. The exact duty of care that they need to uphold, though, depends on your relationship with the property owner – if you were on the property for their financial benefit, they have to take more steps to ensure your safety than if you were trespassing.

Medical Malpractice in Easton

While medical malpractice is probably the least common situation to result in a personal injury case, it often causes the worst injuries.

Doctors and other medical professionals in Easton – including those at the University of Maryland Medical Center – owe their patients a duty of care. If they breach that duty of care, their conduct can amount to malpractice in some cases. These situations frequently cause injuries that prove to be either fatal or disabling over the long term, in large part because medical malpractice victims often have poor health, already. However, the internal nature of many malpractice injuries is often far more severe than any other kind of injury that you could suffer.

Gilman & Bedigian: Personal Injury Attorneys in Easton

These are just a few of the personal injury claims that you could find yourself in need of in the city of Easton. The personal injury lawyers at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian, however, have represented clients in these and countless other kinds of claims in an attempt to get innocent accident victims the compensation that they deserve from the people who caused their pain and suffering.

If you or someone you love has been hurt in an accident in Easton, you need legal representation to fight for your rights and interests and get you the financial help you need to make the full recovery you deserve. Contact us online or call our law office at (800) 529-6162 for a free consultation.