Child Injury Lawyer Little Rock Arkansas
A Arkansas Little Rock child injury lawyer represents injured children who have been the victims of the negligence of others and got hurt in an accident or suffered physical or mental injury as a result of abuse. Children are very vulnerable and require special attention and care from their parents as well as teachers. One of the most difficult issues to handle for parents is to see their kids injured – it hurts more than their own injuries.
Causes of child injury
Unfortunately, there are many circumstances that can result in injured children: accidents, such as motor accident, truck accident, vehicle accidents, school bus accident or bicycle accidents, slips and falls, drowning, poisoning, sports-related injuries, pedestrian accidents, hit and run accident, driving while under the influence, defective and dangerous products, skateboards, house fires, various playground injuries, improper supervision, medical malpractice, and criminal acts such as assault or sexual abuse.
Possible injuries
Child injuries range from the mild to the tragic with an unknown cause. Some mild injuries are finger, hand and knee injuries (most of us have small scars in those areas from childhood) as well as sprains and strains. More serious injuries are burns, head and neck injuries. At the more devastating end, one finds spinal cord damage and paralysis, and the tragic end has the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), the death of an infant one month to one year old (about 2,500 each year in the USA). It is still unknown what causes SIDS and it can strike without warning even in seemingly healthy babies. It is rare in the first month and peaks in babies 2-4 months old at which age 90% of SIDS deaths occur.
Child injury statistics
The statistical numbers of child injuries paint a grim picture: more than 9 million children, under 19, are seen in emergency rooms each year in the US, of this 9 million 3.5 million are the result of sports injuries (about 30 million children participate in organized sports). The majority of head injuries occur during bike riding, skateboarding or other skating type accidents, and most injuries are the results of falls, collisions or overexertion. Drowning is the second leading cause of death among children age 1 to 14, and the swimming pool is about 14 times more likely to cause the death of a child under 4 than motor vehicle accidents (note that children can drown even in shallow water without being submerged). About half of the injury-related deaths occur around the home caused by fire and burns, suffocation, drowning, firearms falls, choking and poisoning. There are more than 250,000 bicycle-related injuries each year among children under the age of 14 and nearly half of these are diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.
What shall I do?
If your child is injured seek medical attention, especially if the child is an infant and has lost consciousness, won’t stop crying, complaints about the head and neck pain vomits repeatedly, becomes difficult to calm down, hard to wake the child up or is not walking normally. Use your instinct as a parent to seek medical attention if you are not comfortable with your child’s behavior or reaction to a familiar routine. If the child suffered an accident, seek immediate medical care, document everything you can (witnesses, insurance information, etc) and take photos of the scene, the area, the products, etc. Preserve all evidence, file a police report and contact a child injury lawyer as soon as you have a chance.
What mistakes shall I avoid?
Do not, under any circumstances, assume that your child is fine, have your child checked out. Before the ambulance arrives, make sure you do not do any of these: wash a head wound that is deep and bleeding, remove any object sticking out of the wound, move your child unless it is necessary, remove a helmet if you suspect a serious head injury, or pick up a child with a suspected head injury (it is a parental instinct to pick up a child and hold tight). Other don’ts around the house: do not leave electrical outlets uncovered, do not allow children in the pool unless they know how to swim or wear a floatation device, do not leave the children unattended in the pool no matter what and no matter whose pool it is, do not expect other parents to do your job, be unpopular and accompany your children to community pools or to bike riding, and never forget to apply sunscreen to prevent sunburn. Never allow your children to ride your car without the seatbelt, ride their bikes without helmets or go out skating without protective gear.
How to prevent child injury?
Ensure the safety of your children by education as well as providing a safe place to play away from driveways and traffic. Always supervise children around water, even in shallow bathwater (a child can drown in as little as a few inches of water) and never leave them alone in water no matter who is knocking on the front door! Install smoke alarms, child-proof your house (cover up the sharp edges of furniture, etc), and keep all medicines and chemicals out of the reach of your kids. Visit playgrounds with safe surfaces like rubber or wood chips and monitor your child’s play very closely (parents have a bad habit of socializing on the playground instead of watching their kids). Teach your kids basic traffic rules: a proper place to walk, how to cross the road, hand signals for bike riding, recognizing basic road signals, etc. Know the sources of poisons: cosmetics, garden products, furniture polish, washing detergents and carbon monoxide, and watch your kids closely as most poisonings occur when they are left alone. Buy and store wisely and use products that are child safe. Watch for carbon monoxide: have heaters, stoves, and fireplaces inspected every year!
Some legal advice
If your child suffered an injury, you may be eligible for compensation for a personal injury claim. The basis of this claim can be negligence by either a person or a company/organization, product liability or malpractice. Since there is a strong emotional bond between parents and children, a parent may file a negligent infliction of emotional distress claim (NIED). If this is available in your state, you need to prove that you are closely related to the victim, you were present at the time the injury occurred, that is, you witnessed the injury, and you suffered severe emotional distress. A child injury is a traumatic event that should be handled by a competent child injury lawyer. Please contact our child injury lawyer in Little Rock AR for a free consultation.