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Howard County is a county in the state of Maryland, located in the central portion of the state between the cities of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It is generally renowned as one of the best places in the country to live, and numerous aspects of life and culture in Howard County have been highly ranked by major publications, including the county library system, local sports community, and even for its outdoor concert venue. Many of these perks come on the back of the county’s degree of affluence, which is also one of the highest in the nation.
Regardless of how successful the county is, though, accidents can still happen in Howard County that end with innocent people getting seriously hurt. If this should ever happen to you or to someone you love, you need legal representation to get the compensation that you need to make a full recovery and that you deserve to get. By working with an attorney and filing a personal injury lawsuit in Howard County, you can fight to enforce your rights to be reimbursed for the losses that you have had to pay but which you should never have incurred, were it not for someone else’s negligence.
Howard County
Howard County is a county in central Maryland, located approximately in the middle of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. With only 253 square miles contained within Howard County’s borders, it is the smallest county in the state. However, its location in the metropolitan areas of both of the largest cities in the region makes Howard County one of the most populous counties, as well, boasting 287,085 residents during the 2010 census for a population density of 1,145 per square mile. This high number is in large part due to the many large towns and small cities located in the southeastern part of Howard County, including the county seat of Ellicott City and the city of Columbia, which is one of the few planned communities in the nation and one of the largest, with around 100,000 residents.
Much of Howard County’s success is built on the overall affluence of these residents. In 2012, it had a median household income of $108,844 and was cited as having the third-highest such income the following year. Many of the most affluent communities in Howard County are situated along the county’s western border along Route 32, including towns like Dayton and Clarksville. However, even the major population areas in Howard County – Ellicott City and Columbia – have a high degree of affluence that leads to a considerable tax base that is used to make the public services in the county some of the best in the country. As a result, Howard County has routinely been named one of the best places in the United States to live by major newspapers and magazines.
Personal Injury in Howard County
Unfortunately, just because Howard County is one of the best places to live in the country does not mean that accidents do not happen within its borders. People everywhere make mistakes or act negligently, and their poor conduct can cause serious accidents that lead to innocent people getting hurt. If you have been the person to suffer from someone else’s poor decisions or negligent actions in Howard County, you deserve to be compensated for your losses. Only by getting financial help from the person or the people who caused your pain and suffering can you return to the level of well-being that you were accustomed to, before your injuries.
Interstate 95
Out of all of the different ways that you can be hurt from someone else’s poor conduct, a car accident is the one that is most likely to happen in Howard County. And while car accidents can happen on any road in the county, the highway that they are the most likely to occur and where they are often the most serious is Interstate 95. This highway runs from Maine all the way down the East Coast of the United States to Florida, passing through Howard County on its way. Additionally, because it is one of the quickest and more direct ways to get from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., I-95 is often busy and full of traffic, even in off-peak hours. Between the high volume on the highway and the high-speed limits that drivers are allowed to drive at, traffic accidents on Interstate 95 are common and serious.
In Maryland, anyone driving a vehicle on the state’s roads has a legal obligation to drive reasonably safely for the conditions they encounter. If they do not, they can be liable for any injuries that result from a crash that their poor driving creates. Despite this legal obligation to drive safely, few people seem to take this very seriously on Interstate 95, leading to many accidents that hurt innocent people.
Premises Liability
Howard County is well known for its vibrant park system and its top notch libraries. However, they are also the source of potentially dangerous conditions that can trip you up or make you slip and fall. These falls can be disastrous if you were not expecting them, are elderly, or have a medical condition that gets implicated in the accident.
Luckily, Maryland’s premises liability law provides an avenue for recovery if you have been the victim of a slip and fall accident in Howard County. This law requires landowners and managers to take reasonable steps to maintain their property in a way that ensures the safety of those who visit. Importantly, those necessary steps are at their most stringent when the property is being held open to the public, because of the sheer number of people who are likely to be on the premises at any given time.
Howard County General Hospital
If you get hurt in an accident, or even if you are just getting a routine check up or medical procedure to correct an existing medical issue or make your life better, the medical care that you receive in Howard County can be less than adequate. In fact, it can sometimes be outright dangerous to your health, especially if a doctor or other professional makes a mistake or acts negligently in a way that amounts to medical malpractice.
In Howard County, the place where this can happen the most often is at the Howard County General Hospital in Columbia. This hospital, which has more than 250 beds for inpatient care and nearly 1,000 physicians and other healthcare workers in their overall workforce of nearly 2,000, is a part of the Johns Hopkins system of hospitals in Maryland and provides a huge portion of the medical care needed in Howard County. In 2016, the Howard County General Hospital treated more than 78,000 people in its emergency rooms and performed 12,390 surgeries.
However, with all of this medical care happening at the Howard County General Hospital, the doctors and surgeons who work so hard are bound to make a mistake at some point. When they do and it amounts to an instance of medical malpractice, getting compensated for your injuries is absolutely critical.
Howard County Courthouse
If you get hurt in Howard County and want to file a personal injury claim to enforce your rights to compensation, your claim will be heard by either the Howard County District Court, if it is for less than $5,000, or by the Howard County Circuit Court if it is for more. Both of these courthouses are located in the seat of Howard County, Ellicott City, with the District Court at 3451 Court House Drive, and the Circuit Court at the intersection of Park Avenue and Court Place.
An important thing to remember if you are considering pursuing a personal injury lawsuit against the person or the people who hurt you in an accident in Howard County is the state of Maryland’s statute of limitations for these cases. Maryland requires most kinds of personal injury cases to be filed within three years after the incident occurred that led to your injuries. If you do not initiate the lawsuit until after those three years have expired, your case will be dismissed, regardless of whether it is a great case, or not.
Personal Injury Lawyers at Gilman & Bedigian Serve Victims in Howard County
If you get hurt in Howard County in an accident that you did not cause, there is no reason why you should be the one to pay for the costs of your own recovery. Those costs should be covered by the person who was ultimately responsible for the accident that hurt you. If this were not the case, justice would not be served because there is no way you deserved your injuries, never mind the other financial losses associated with them.
That is why the personal injury lawyers at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian represent accident victims in Howard County. Call us at (800) 529-6162 or contact us online for a free consultation so you can start exploring your legal options.