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Worcester County is a county on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Despite being one of the largest in the state, Worcester County has one of the lowest populations for a county in Maryland. However, Worcester County is the site of some of the most popular summer destinations in the entire state, with numerous high-quality beaches along the barrier islands to the east of the county’s main land mass.
However, accidents can happen in Worcester County just as often as they happen in other areas of Maryland or the United States. These accidents can lead to innocent people getting hurt, some of them quite seriously. When these accidents happen because someone was acting negligently or recklessly for the situation, it can be incredibly unfair to whoever was victimized by their poor conduct, especially because there was often nothing that could have been done to avoid the accident.
If this ever happens to you or to someone you love in Worcester County, having the help of a personal injury attorney can make a huge difference in your future well-being. Without pursuing a personal injury claim to enforce your rights to compensation for your injuries and other losses, you could find yourself in dire financial straits trying to cover them on your own and can let the people who wronged you continue on with their lives without paying what they should owe.
Worcester County
Worcester County is the easternmost county in Maryland and is located on the state’s Eastern Shore, to the east of the Chesapeake Bay. However, Worcester County is one of the only counties on the Eastern Shore to have no contact with the Chesapeake Bay: The Pocomoke River, which forms the county’s western border, flows to the Bay, but Worcester County never actually touches the Bay’s shore. However, Worcester County is the only county in all of Maryland that touches the Atlantic Ocean, making it a prime vacation point for many of the people in the state and even the surrounding region.
In part because of this popularity as a summer tourist destination, the number of people who live in Worcester County can be misleading. During the 2010 census, there were 51,454 people living in the area. They were, however, scattered over Worcester County’s 695 square miles, 468 of which were land, making for an exceptionally low 110 people per square mile. Many of these people congregated along Route 113, in towns like Pocomoke City and Berlin, which had around 4,000 residents each, and the county seat of Snow Hill, which was home to over 2,000 more. However, Ocean City remains the main attraction in all of Worcester County. The 2010 census found that there were 7,102 people living there, but on a typical summer weekend there could be more than 300,000 more to enjoy the beaches and other local attractions, making it the second-most populated area in Maryland during those times, behind only the city of Baltimore.
Personal Injury in Worcester County
If you or someone you love gets hurt in Worcester County because of something that someone else did that was negligent or reckless, you could feel like you do not deserve the pain and suffering that you are going through. Those feelings are justified. It is unfair for you to have been hurt in an accident that you did not cause and that, oftentimes, you could not even avoid.
In Worcester County, injury-causing accidents happen in a variety of ways. However, some of the most common and the most severe injuries happen in car accidents on some of the major roadways in the county, in premises liability situations in Ocean City, and as a result of medical malpractice in the busiest county hospitals.
Car Accidents on Route 113 and Route 90
Under Maryland’s personal injury law, drivers are legally required to operate their vehicles in ways that are reasonable for the road conditions at the time. If they fail to do so and their conduct causes a car accident, they could be held liable for their actions, whether they be negligent, reckless, or even intentional. Unfortunately, anyone who drives on the major thoroughfares in Worcester County or the rest of Maryland know how few drivers seem to take seriously their legal duty to drive safely. Instead of driving safely, they often tailgate, speed, and weave in and out of traffic, frequently driving while distracted or even drunk.
These poor driving habits often result in car accidents. In Worcester County, some of the worst of these crashes happen on either Route 113 or Route 90. Route 113 runs almost the entire way through Worcester County and through some of its most populated areas, from the southwest side of the county at Pocomoke City, through Snow Hill and Berlin, before leaving from the northern end of the county into Delaware. Route 90, on the other hand, serves Ocean City, bringing thousands of tourists to the beaches every day. With so many travelers and such high speeds, these major roadways see numerous accidents every week that leave countless victims severely hurt or even killed every year.
Premises Liability in Ocean City
Many accidents happen on someone else’s property and are caused by the owner of that property not taking proper care of it. When their poor maintenance leads to a hazardous condition, and this causes you to slip and fall and get hurt, you deserve to be compensated for their oversight or negligence through Maryland’s premises liability law.
Bars, shops, and even beaches in Ocean City are full of hazardous conditions like slippery floors, broken stairs and railings, tipping chairs, and potholes. Because the person who owns or maintains the property is in the best position to make sure that these conditions are fixed or at least adequately warned of, they should be the one to pay for your injuries if they were caused by an accident on their property.
Medical Malpractice in Atlantic General Hospital
While there are relatively few medical malpractice injuries when they do happen they are frequently severe or even fatal. After all, malpractice victims were frequently seeking medical help at the time of their injury, meaning their health was already compromised when they were hurt. Other times, doctors commit malpractice by failing to diagnose a patient with a severe malady that worsens until it is too late to fix.
Maryland’s personal injury law requires that doctors provide reasonable medical attention to their patients. If they fail to do so, they could be held liable for their malpractice. In Worcester County, one of the places that this can happen is at the Atlantic General Hospital. With 62 beds in its acute care facility and more than 200 medical professionals on staff, the Atlantic General Hospital cares for over 58,000 people each year, making medical malpractice an unfortunate matter of time. When it does happen and you were the victim, you could be facing potentially fatal or permanently disabling injuries that you should be compensated for.
Worcester County Courthouse
If you get hurt in Worcester County and decide to pursue your rights to compensation by filing a personal injury claim, you only have a limited amount of time to start the process. In Maryland, the statute of limitations forces you to file most types of personal injury lawsuits before three years have passed since the incident that caused your injury.
If you do file a personal injury claim to get the compensation that you deserve from the people who hurt you in Worcester County, your case will go before one of two courts in the county: The District Court, if the claim is only a small one, or the Circuit Court, if your claim is larger or if you are demanding a jury trial.
The District Court in Worcester County has two locations – one is at 301 Commerce Street, in Snow Hill, while the other is at 6505 Coastal Highway, in Ocean City. Parking for either location is available in front of the courthouse.
The Worcester County Circuit Court, on the other hand, is located only in Snow Hill, at 1 West Market Street. Parking for this courthouse is available in municipal lots on both Washington Street and on Franklin Street.
Gilman & Bedigian: Personal Injury Lawyers Serving Worcester County
If you or someone you love has been hurt in Worcester County, there is no reason why you should go through the pain and suffering and also pay for the costs of your recovery and the other losses you have suffered, as well. The person or people who were responsible for the accident that hurt you should compensate you, financially, to make you whole once again.
This is why the personal injury lawyers at the law office of Gilman & Bedigian work to represent accident victims in Worcester County. By fighting for your rights and interests both inside the courtroom and outside of it, we can ensure you get the compensation that you need and deserve. Contact us online or call our law office at (800) 529-6162 for a free consultation.