Catastrophic Injury Lawyers Serving Moundsville

Life-Changing Injuries Require Experienced Legal Representation

A catastrophic injury can permanently affect your health, your ability to work, your independence, and your family’s future. These injuries often require far more than immediate medical treatment. Rehabilitation, ongoing medical care, assistive equipment, help with everyday activities, and other needs may continue for years or a lifetime.

If you or someone you love suffered a catastrophic injury because of another person or company’s negligence, you may have the right to seek compensation. The Moundsville catastrophic injury lawyers at Bordas & Bordas help individuals and families throughout Marshall County understand their rights and pursue compensation for the full impact of serious injuries.

Our attorneys investigate how an injury happened, identify potentially responsible parties, and evaluate both the immediate and long-term consequences. When necessary, we work with medical professionals, life-care planners, vocational specialists, economists, and other experts to understand what an injury may mean for a client’s future.

What Is Considered a Catastrophic Injury?

A catastrophic injury is a severe injury that causes long-term or permanent impairment and significantly affects a person’s ability to work, live independently, or perform everyday activities.

Catastrophic injuries can create medical, financial, and personal consequences that continue long after the initial accident. An injured person may require ongoing medical treatment, rehabilitation, assistive equipment, home or vehicle modifications, or help with daily activities.

Because the effects may last a lifetime, evaluating a catastrophic injury claim requires looking beyond current medical bills and lost wages to understand future care, lost earning capacity, and other long-term needs.

What Are the Most Common Types of Catastrophic Injuries?

Many types of trauma can result in permanent or long-term impairment. Common catastrophic injuries include:

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI): Serious brain injuries can affect memory, cognition, communication, behavior, mobility, and a person’s ability to perform everyday activities.
Spinal cord injuries: Damage to the spinal cord can cause partial or complete paralysis, loss of sensation, chronic pain, and other lifelong complications.
Severe burns: Serious burns can cause permanent scarring, disfigurement, nerve damage, limited mobility, and the need for multiple surgeries or long-term treatment.
Amputations and loss of limbs: Losing a limb can affect mobility, employment, independence, and quality of life and may require prosthetics, rehabilitation, and ongoing medical care.
Severe orthopedic injuries: Complex fractures, crushed bones, and serious injuries to joints or other parts of the musculoskeletal system can result in permanent limitations, chronic pain, or disability.
Organ damage: Serious trauma can damage the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, or other internal organs and may require surgery, long-term treatment, or lifelong medical monitoring.
Vision or hearing loss: Trauma that causes permanent blindness, impaired vision, deafness, or significant hearing loss can dramatically change a person’s ability to work and perform everyday activities.
Permanent nerve damage: Serious nerve injuries can result in loss of movement or sensation, chronic pain, weakness, and other lasting impairments.

The severity of the injury and its long-term effects ultimately determine how significantly it will affect an injured person’s life and future needs.

When a catastrophic injury is caused by someone else’s negligence, a personal injury claim should account not only for the losses the injured person has already experienced, but also for the long-term medical, financial, and personal impact of the injury.

What Causes Catastrophic Injuries in Moundsville?

Catastrophic injuries can result from many types of accidents and preventable incidents. In Moundsville and throughout Marshall County, causes may include:

Car, truck, and motorcycle accidents
Workplace and industrial accidents
Medical negligence
Defective or dangerous products
Falls and unsafe property conditions
Pedestrian and bicycle accidents
Fires and explosions
Other acts of negligence

How Is a Catastrophic Injury Claim Different From Other Injury Claims?

Catastrophic injury claims often involve losses that extend much further into the future than those in more routine personal injury cases.

The claim may need to account for a lifetime of medical treatment, rehabilitation, personal care, reduced earning capacity, permanent disability, and changes to the injured person’s independence and quality of life.

Determining those future needs can require significant investigation and expert analysis. Medical professionals may evaluate prognosis and future treatment, vocational experts may assess the ability to return to work, economists may calculate future financial losses, and life-care planners may help identify the care and equipment an injured person is expected to need.

Those issues should be carefully evaluated before resolving the claim. Once a case is settled, an injured person generally cannot seek additional compensation later because their condition changed or their long-term care became more expensive than anticipated.


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How Long Do I Have to File a Catastrophic Injury Claim in West Virginia?

In most West Virginia personal injury cases, you generally have two years to file a lawsuit seeking compensation for a catastrophic injury. However, the deadline can vary depending on how the injury occurred and the circumstances of the case.

If the catastrophic injury was caused by medical negligence, different rules apply. Under West Virginia’s Medical Professional Liability Act, a medical malpractice claim generally must be filed within two years of the date of the injury or within two years of when the injury was discovered, or reasonably should have been discovered. West Virginia law also generally imposes a 10-year limit from the date of the medical injury, subject to certain exceptions.

Other circumstances can affect the time available to bring a claim, including the age of the injured person and the type of party responsible for the injury.

Even when you have two years to file a lawsuit, it is important to begin investigating a catastrophic injury as soon as possible. Evidence can be lost, witnesses can become harder to locate, and understanding the full medical and financial impact of a life-changing injury can take time.

A Moundsville catastrophic injury lawyer can determine which deadline applies and take steps to preserve evidence and protect your right to seek compensation.

What Compensation May Be Available After a Catastrophic Injury in West Virginia?

If someone else’s negligence caused a catastrophic injury in Moundsville or other parts of West Virginia, the injured person may be able to pursue compensation for both current losses and reasonably anticipated future losses.

Depending on the circumstances, compensation may include:

Medical expenses
Future medical treatment and rehabilitation
Lost wages
Loss of future earning capacity
Home and vehicle modifications
Long-term care expenses
Pain and suffering
Emotional distress
Permanent disability
Disfigurement
Loss of enjoyment of life

The value of a catastrophic injury claim depends on the specific facts of the case and the long-term impact of the injury.
Bordas & Bordas works to identify and document those consequences so our clients can pursue compensation for the losses they are experiencing now and the needs they may face in the future.

How a Moundsville Catastrophic Injury Lawyer Can Help

Our well-practiced catastrophic injury lawyers in Moundsville could help you determine what to do to preserve the evidence you need to substantiate your legal claims. Some of the most common forms of documentary evidence used in catastrophic injury cases are medical bills and records. These documents must be carefully scrutinized by attorneys and others to determine the exact cost of your medical treatment.

The ability to read and understand medical bills helps your lawyer understand your medical treatment. Calculating the total cost of your medical care is necessary to help you demand comprehensive compensation for your injuries. This means that it is necessary for you to work with a seasoned personal injury attorney who can properly analyze all of your medical records associated with your injuries.

Talk With a Moundsville Catastrophic Injury Lawyer

At Bordas & Bordas, we represent individuals and families whose lives have been permanently altered by serious injuries caused by negligence. Our attorneys handle catastrophic injury claims involving motor vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, workplace and industrial accidents, defective products, and other preventable incidents.

Our Moundsville legal team can investigate what caused the injury, identify potentially responsible parties, evaluate available sources of compensation, and help you understand what the injury may mean for your family’s future.

Contact Bordas & Bordas to speak with a Moundsville catastrophic injury lawyer and schedule an initial consultation.