Suppose that the limitations of a given victim make that same victim’s injuries worse. Can the person with those limitations get compensated for the accident-related injuries? The answer to those questions exists in a few brief statements and a condensed version of a relevant personal injury case.
The law acknowledges the fact that all people must seek to survive in this world without endangering others. By the same token, no person has the right to create an unnecessary danger, one that could harm someone else. Yet doctors and insurance companies do not always cooperate with efforts to put into practice those efforts that rely on an acceptance of the two earlier statements.
If a loved one has an implantable device called a ventricular shunt, it does put some limitations on the patient that has to rely on its operation. It will not keep pumping excess liquid from the ventricles, if the patient’s head gets lowered repeatedly, or for an extended period of time. Still, it does work fine when a patient with such a shunt is driving a car.
If a shunt has been in place for close to 15 years, and if a driver’s head bounces forward and backward, following the force of a rear impact, the old shunt could break. The break would not be visible to the human eye, but it would eventually cause the affected driver to develop headaches. The driver could not recover from her/his injury without undergoing surgery.
So, the driver must hire a personal injury lawyer in Lindsay, intending to file a personal injury case against the owner/driver of the car that had hit her. The insurance company somehow twists her right to survive and insists that she should have been wearing 2 seat belts. The lawyer thinks that the insurer has a good grasp of the situation. He does not realize that, at that point, medical scientists are still learning new facts about the shunt’s behavior in various situations.
The lawyers do prepare a claim. The lawyers do negotiate a settlement. Still, that settlement does not really hand the driver a fair deal. No attorney had reached out to the client with the physical limitations, in an effort to stay on top of her case. In this instance, an attempt to seek out the latest information on shunts would have allowed the victim’s attorney to stay on top of their case.
An attorney that did some research would have learned that installation of two seat belts was not a standard procedure, even if a driver had a shunt. Hence, it did not make much sense for any insurer to suggest that such a procedure should have been followed.