Madison WI Attorneys discuss the top causes of Personal Injury to Children
The injury of a child is a terrifying thing. Even a minor injury can seem so much worse because of the child’s size and comparative fragility. Unfortunately, personal injury in children is all too common, and not just in the form of scrapes after falling off a bike. The Centers for Disease Control has statistics on the leading causes of fatal and non-fatal injuries for different age groups. For kids, the results show a high number of preventable causes.
Statistics for 2014
For children, the leading causes of unintentional non-fatal injuries were falling, being hit by something, bites and stings, overexertion, cutting, and motor vehicle accidents. Unintentional fatal injuries included motor vehicle accidents, drowning, and suffocation, among others.
Sometimes these are due to true accidents, but in all cases, the cause — and whose responsibility it was for preventing the accident — need to be investigated. The police need to rule out malicious intent (murder disguised as an accident is not just a mystery novel trope), but they also need to see the chain of events, and that’s where Madison WI attorneys come in.
Liability and Punishment
At the heart of the matter is negligence. Was this something that could have been prevented? How easy would it have been to prevent the accident? For example, a faulty part in a car leading to the car going out of control and hitting a child could be the carmaker’s fault (because of the defective part), or it could be the fault of the parents of the child (not watching the child and letting him or her run onto a busy street).
Establishing liability is crucial if the case is going to court. In the above example, you don’t want to blame the driver if the car malfunctioned beyond the driver’s control and the child ran out into the street at the wrong moment while the driver was using all best efforts to stop the car. On the other hand, you don’t want to blame the parents if the driver was drunk and couldn’t take the right actions to stop the car, instead swerving onto the family’s lawn.
If your family has been unfortunately involved in an accident that resulted in injury to a child, contact Madison WI attorneys before going to court. This is a delicate situation that requires skill and tact.