Personal Injury In Taneytown, Maryland

Taneytown is a small city in Carroll County, in north-central Maryland, near the state’s northern border with the state of Pennsylvania. The town is just over a dozen miles south of the site of the famous Civil War battle of Gettysburg and has grown slowly since its incorporation soon before that famous battle. The age of Taneytown has resulted in it having several significant historical districts, each of which helps to endow the town with its distinct character.

Despite being kind of a quiet, small-town community, Taneytown is still a place where accidents can happen and where innocent people can get hurt by someone else’s negligent actions or oversights. If this should ever happen to you while you are in Taneytown, you need to get legal representation to ensure that you get compensated for all of your losses that stem from the accident.

This is where the personal injury lawyers at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian can help. By filing a personal injury claim on your behalf against the person or people who were ultimately responsible for the accident that hurt you, we can fight for your legal rights and interests and get you the compensation you need to make a full recovery.

Taneytown

Taneytown is one of the larger towns in Carroll County, Maryland, with a population of 6,728 during the 2010 census. Its location in northern Maryland has put it in the middle of some of the United States most trying times, giving Taneytown a unique and often first-hand perspective of American history.

During both the American Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Taneytown was not the site of any fighting, but was a crucial town that many armies passed through. General George Washington passed through the area at one point, remarking on the village’s quaintness before it had grown large enough to incorporate into the town that it is, today. During the Civil War, Taneytown was one of the towns that the Union army rushed through as it chased General Robert E. Lee’s forces northward during the Gettysburg Campaign.

These important scenes from American history are the bulk of the historical significance that Taneytown has gone through in its years, and form much of the exhibits on display at the local Taneytown History Museum. Houses and buildings from this period also form most of the Taneytown Historic District. However, one of Taneytown’s other significant buildings, the Bullfrog Road Bridge, was built much later, in the early 1900s, and is famous for its rare steel truss design.

Personal Injury Claims in Taneytown

Even though it is a quiet town full of residences, Taneytown is still the site of numerous accidents that lead to unfortunate people getting hurt because of the poor conduct of others.

Luckily, the personal injury law of Maryland allows accident victims to formally request that the people who caused the accident reimburse them for the costs of their recovery. This can be done through a successful personal injury lawsuit, and requires you to show four different legal elements:

1. The other person owed you a legal duty of care to keep you out of harm’s way,
2. That person breached that duty of care,
3. That breach of the duty of care was the cause of your injuries, and
4. You were, in fact, hurt in a physical or financial manner, causing legal damages.

The Legal Duty of Care

All personal injury claims in Maryland rely on being able to show that the person or people you are suing had a legal responsibility to keep you safe or at least to not put you in harm’s way. This is the legal duty of care. Generally, someone else has a duty of care towards you if it would be foreseeable that their conduct could hurt you if it were not done with reasonable prudence. Of course, what this entails depends on the exact circumstances of each case. However, determining exactly what it entails is crucial in order to show that they failed to uphold their duty of care.

Breaching the Duty of Care

Only after the duty of care has been established can you show that the other person did not uphold it – thereby breaching their duty of care towards you. Importantly, it does not make much of a difference why the other person breached their duty of care. Whether they did it intentionally or unintentionally, they can still be held liable for their conduct if it caused your injuries.

Causation

The next step in a Maryland personal injury case is showing causation. It would be unfair to hold someone else liable for their poor conduct if it did not actually lead to your injuries. This is why you have to show that it was the cause of your damages. In Maryland this requires two elements:

1. You would have been hurt, but for the other person’s breach of their duty of care, and
2. That breach of the duty of care was not so far removed from your injuries that it would be unfair to hold the other party liable for their poor conduct.

Legal Damages

In Maryland, personal injury cases are all about getting you the compensation that you need to make a full recovery from your injuries. In order to know how much compensation you need, then, you need to show all of the ways that the accident set you back. These are your legal damages.

In Maryland, your legal damages do not just include your medical bills, though. They also include the future medical expenses you are likely to make, as well as the wages you have lost, both now and in the future. It can also include payments for the pain and suffering that you or your family has gone through because of the accident, as well.

Car Accidents in Taneytown

A common source of personal injury claims, in both Taneytown and elsewhere in the United States, is from a car accident. Drivers have a duty of care to others on the road – whether they are other car drivers or bikers or pedestrians – to drive reasonably safe. After all, if a driver is not going reasonably safely, it is completely foreseeable that their poor driving could hurt someone else.

Unfortunately, not all drivers take this responsibility very seriously. They drive while drunk or distracted, all the time. If this causes a car accident in which you get hurt, you could be entitled to compensation for your losses.

Dog Bites

In a residential town like Taneytown, many people keep pets. Unfortunately, dog bites are a potential problem whenever someone owns a dog, no matter how friendly the owner thinks their dog is. Dogs are difficult to predict, sometimes, because they could feel threatened or think they need to act protectively and have limited ways to show that they are about to become aggressive. Worse, children rarely know to pick up on the signs that a dog is getting tense or angry, making them especially common victims of a dog attack. This makes it even more important to seek a personal injury attorney after a dog bite – the injuries of a child are more likely to be debilitating over the long term than those of an adult.

Premises Liability

Business and other property owners in Taneytown owe a duty of care to everyone who visits them on their premises reasonably safe. If they breach this duty of care and this causes someone to get hurt, they could find themselves facing premises liability to compensate the victims. Importantly, this could be true even if you were trespassing on the property – while it is lower than it would be in other situations, landowners still have a duty of care to uphold to people who they have not given permission to be on the property.

Medical Malpractice in Taneytown

While the city of Taneytown does not have its own hospital, there are numerous medical professionals in the Carroll County that all owe their patients a duty of care to provide reasonably safe medical attention. If they fail to uphold this duty of care, the conduct of these healthcare professionals could rise to the level of medical malpractice. While medical malpractice is one of the rarer forms of personal injury cas when it does happen it often involves severe injuries because the victim’s health is already often compromised.

Gilman & Bedigian: Trial Attorneys Serving Taneytown

These are only some of the most common or severe kinds of personal injury case that can happen in Taneytown. Regardless of the shape that it takes, though, an accident that hurts you is something that you should get legal representation for – if you are entitled to compensation, you should protect your legal interests and avoid the significant financial strain that could result.

Hiring the personal injury attorneys at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian is the best way to ensure you get the legal help you need after being hurt in Taneytown or elsewhere in Maryland. Contact us online or call our law office at (800) 529-6162.