Personal Injury In Mount Rainier, Maryland

Mount Rainier is a town in central Maryland, located right on the state’s border with Washington, D.C. Its close proximity to the nation’s capital makes it unsurprising that Mount Rainier got its start as one of the city’s first streetcar suburbs in the late 19th century. Since then, though, Mount Rainier has grown into a considerable town of its own, establishing its own unique culture and character.

Despite being predominantly a residential community, Mount Rainier is still a place where accidents can happen and where innocent people can get hurt because of someone else’s negligence. If you have the misfortune to be an innocent accident victim, the time you miss from work and the cost of your recovery can make life difficult.

This is where a personal injury claim can make a huge difference. Filing a lawsuit against the person or the people who were ultimately responsible for the accident that led to your injuries is nothing more than an official request that they step forward and pay for what they have done. Making such a lawsuit a successful one is what the personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian can do.

Mount Rainier

Mount Rainier is a town in central Maryland, right on Washington, D.C.’s northeastern border. The town was created in 1891 and named after the mountain of the same name in the state of Washington. It was not until 1899, though, that Mount Rainier became a popular place to live. That was when one of Washington, D.C.’s streetcar lines was extended through the area and into neighboring Hyattsville, further away to the northeast, making the Mount Rainier stop on the line the first outside the District of Columbia. Route 1 – also known as Rhode Island Avenue in Mount Rainier – follows the path that the streetcar took at the time.

Once the streetcar took hold in the area, Mount Rainier grew rapidly, attracting businesses to the area around the streetcar and residents looking for affordable housing to the homes built in the surrounding area.

The population of Mount Rainier rose steadily through the first half of the 20th century until a massive apartment complex right on the border with the District of Columbia – Kaywood Garden – was built around World War II. This dramatically increased the population for a few decades. However, the growth was hamstrung when the streetcar was replaced with a bus line in 1958. Mount Rainier’s population peaked in the 1950s at nearly 11,000. Since then, it has stagnated nearer the total taken during the 2010 census – 8,080.

Recently, Mount Rainier has become known as a very diverse neighborhood: Half of the residents are African American while another third are of Hispanic origin. Additionally, the LGBT community has a strong presence in the area. Together, this has created a bustling arts scene in the area, which benefits from Mount Rainier’s close proximity to Washington, D.C.’s numerous opportunities.

Personal Injury Claims in Mount Rainier, Maryland

Two of the worst parts about accidents are that they can happen anywhere and at any time, and that they happen to people who are neither expecting them nor who deserve them. Mount Rainier is no exception.

While these accidents can come in a huge variety shapes and sizes, the personal injury law of Maryland requires each one to have four elements in order for a personal injury claim to be successful:

1. The person being sued must have had a duty of care towards the victim of the accident,
2. That person must have breached the duty of care that they owed,
3. That breach must have been the cause of the victim’s injury, and
4. The victim needs to show that they suffered some kind of physical or financial harm, also known as legal damages.

Duty of Care

The first step in any personal injury lawsuit filed in Maryland is proving that the person you are filing the lawsuit against owed you or the person you love a duty of care. The duty of care usually requires people to act reasonably prudently whenever their conduct could foreseeably cause an injury to someone else. Of course, what this entails depend on the specific facts of the case, but it usually means that the other person needs to avoid acting negligently.

Breaching the Duty of Care

Once it has been established what was the duty of care and what it required the other person to do, the next step is to show that they failed to uphold that responsibility. In Maryland, it does not matter if the person or people responsible for your injuries did not act intentionally – even if they acted accidentally or negligently, they will still be held liable for the conduct if it was the cause of your injuries.

Causation

The next step in a personal injury case in Maryland is showing that the other person’s conduct was the cause of your injuries. This is required because it would be unfair to hold someone else liable if what they did was not the cause of your injuries. In Maryland, showing causation requires two different pieces:

1. You would not have been hurt, but for the other person’s conduct or inaction, and
2. The other person’s conduct or inaction was not so far removed from your injuries that it would be unfair to hold them accountable for your losses.

Legal Damages

Finally, because personal injury cases are all about getting accident victims the compensation they need to recover from their injuries, you need to show all the ways that you were hurt or set back in order to be successful. If this were not the case, it would be impossible to tell if you have been adequately compensated or not.

Luckily, in Maryland, you can get compensation for much more than just your medical bills. You can also get recovery for the wages that you have lost during your recovery time as well as what you are likely to lose because of your injuries, as well as the cost of your current and future medical expenses, plus the pain and suffering that you and your family have gone through from the accident.

Car Accidents in Mount Rainier

Car accidents are a frequent source of personal injury cases. In Mount Rainier, this is even more likely because of the town’s status as a suburb and commuter town for Washington, D.C. Legally, drivers have a duty of care to drive reasonably safely because of how foreseeable it is for others to get hurt if they do not. Despite this legal duty of care, though, very few drivers take this responsibility seriously. If their negligence or recklessness leads to a car accident that causes your injuries, you could be entitled to compensation to help make you whole, once again.

Animal Bites

With so many single-family homes in Mount Rainier, many of the residents keep pets, including dogs, on their property. Unfortunately, despite what their owners might think, all dogs have the potential to lash out at strangers and cause a serious dog bite injury. To make matters worse, the victims of these dog bites are often children, whose injuries are more likely to be long-lasting and impact their development.

Because of the seriousness of dog bite injuries in Mount Rainier, it is especially important to file a personal injury claim on their behalf if they have been hurt. It can make a huge difference in their future health.

Slip and Falls

Any property or business owner in Mount Rainier has a legal duty of care to keep their visitors reasonably safe. If they fail to uphold this duty of care, it can open them up to premises liability. The exact extent of this duty of care, though, depends on your relationship with the property owner. For example, if you are patronizing a store, then the store’s owner has more of a responsibility to keep you safe than if you were trespassing in the store. However, even if you were trespassing on someone else’s property when you got hurt, you always have legal rights that could entitle you to compensation if the circumstances were right.

Gilman & Bedigian: Personal Injury Attorneys Serving Mount Rainier

These are just some of the most common types of accidents that lead to personal injuries in Mount Rainier. There are countless other kinds of personal injury situations, but they all involve one thing in common – you suffered a physical or financial injury because of someone else’s conduct.

While these situations are frustrating, you are not without recourse. Hiring the personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian can help you get the compensation that you need, in order to make a full recovery, and that you deserve. After all, if you were innocent in the accident, there is no reason why you should be the one who has to pay for the repercussions of it.

Contact our attorneys online or call our law office at (800) 529-6162.