As a mom, you want to protect your child. However, sometimes they sustain injuries. When that happens, you might feel helpless or like you let them down.
What took place might not be your fault, though. You may be able to hold an individual or entity accountable. If you can prove that someone injured your child, you might consider filing a personal injury lawsuit on their behalf.
This is something you can do for your child, but how do you know whether you have grounds to move forward? Let’s discuss some ways you can tell whether this is a viable option for you.
Where Did Your Child’s Injury Occur?
If you contact a personal injury attorney, probably one of the first things they’ll ask you is your child’s location when they sustained the injury. You might have lawsuit grounds if your child injured themselves:
- At school
- In a store
- In a public park
Let’s say your child sustained the injury at school. The janitor mopped the floor and failed to put up adequate signage. Your child slipped and fell, breaking their arm.
If something like this happens, you have an excellent chance to win if you sue the school. You can win a judgment against the school district and use the money to help cover your child’s medical bills.
What About if the Injury Occurs at Home?
Maybe your child was at home when they sustained the injury. For instance, perhaps they:
- Fell while playing in the backyard
- Cut or burned themselves while cooking
Generally, you won’t be able to bring a lawsuit against anyone if this happens. The child was in your home, so you should have been watching out for them. However, there are exceptions.
Maybe your child injured themselves while using a defective product. You might then bring a lawsuit against the product’s manufacturer.
Perhaps you hired a babysitter to watch your child. They sustained an injury when the babysitter was talking on the phone and not paying attention. That’s an instance where you could conceivably bring a suit against the babysitter.
How Badly Was Your Child Injured?
There’s also the issue of how bad your child’s injury was. If all that happened was they fell somewhere and skinned their knee, that’s probably not enough for you to bother with a lawsuit, regardless of where it occurred.
If the injury is more severe, that’s when you should at least think about whether you can hold someone accountable. If your child has to have multiple doctor’s appointments and lots of treatment for whatever happened, that’s when you start to get into possible lawsuit grounds.
If your child needs physical therapy, surgery, subscription medication, etc., all of that costs money. Perhaps your health insurance will help, but you’re probably paying for at least some of it out of pocket.
If you’re sure that an individual or entity caused your child’s injury, there’s no reason not to take them to court to try to hold them accountable.
What Are the Ramifications if You Take This Action?
Maybe you feel like you have grounds to take an entity or individual to court if they harmed your child. However, before you move forward, you should also think about what will happen if you take this action.
Perhaps your child sustained an injury when they were over at a friend’s house. You thought the friend’s parents would be watching the kids, but they weren’t. You feel the parents were negligent.
Even though you might win a lawsuit if you bring one, you’ll probably lose any friendship with this family. Maybe others in your friend circle will shun you because of this decision.
You might lose your community standing. You may decide it’s not worth it to pursue a lawsuit for this reason.
How Far Are You Willing to Go?
You should also know that if you pursue a personal injury lawsuit for your child, it’s probably going to get very contentious. Few individuals or entities will admit wrongdoing. More often than not, they’re going to fight you on this thing.
You have to think about how litigious you’re willing to be. If you talk to a lawyer, and they say you don’t have a particularly strong case, you may be better off letting things go.
You want justice for your child, but this is going to impact your life significantly. You must carefully weigh the cons and pros and decide whether it’s worth it.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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