Hand Injury Attorney
Choose an attorney who will fight for you to get the highest settlement for your hand injury claim
One of the most life-altering injuries someone can suffer is a disabling injury to their hand. Having full use of our hands is something that most of us take for granted until it’s taken away from us. Whether you are a secretary or a machine operator, an artist or a surgeon, a debilitating hand injury could affect your livelihood and even permanently alter your career path. Here is some information about common types of hand injuries and the compensation that might be available to you if you suffer one of these injuries.
Free Consultation With A Hand Injury Lawyer
If your hand injury is someone else’s fault, then after seeking medical attention, consult with a personal injury lawyer. Critically, a consultation with a skilled injury lawyer can enable you to know what direction to take from a legal angle. The serious injuries lawyers at My Rights Law, who have successfully pursued thousands of cases, are dedicated to helping clients get the best resolutions to their situations. In your consultation, we will prudently evaluate your case and advise you about possible legal solutions. Most cases are taken on a contingency fee basis. This means that attorney’s fees are not charged to you unless you prevail against the responsible party in your case. You should not just hire any attorneys for legal representation when it comes to your serious injuries. The skilled hand injury lawyers at My Rights Law will hold your wrongdoer accountable and make them pay you for what they’ve done. For a free consultation with the legal team at My Rights Law, call (888) 702-8882 or contact us by filling out our secure web form.
What Are The Types Of Hand Injuries?
There are well over a dozen common injuries and medical problems that can affect your hands. In medical terms, the “hand” consists of the wrist, palm, and fingers. With 27 bones, 27 joints, 34 muscles, and more than 100 tendons and ligaments, not to mention many blood vessels and nerves, the list of possible ways in which your hand could suffer an injury seems virtually endless. Injuries can range in severity from simple sprains or strains to complete loss of hand function.
Sprains And Strains
A sprain or strain is an injury to a ligament or tendon. Ligament and tendons are tissues—not muscles—that help to connect all of the bones and muscles in your hand. An injury to a ligament or tendon could involve bruising, stretching, or damaging this tissue. Overuse of your hand, or some sort of trauma, can cause these injuries. For example, bracing yourself while falling can often lead to damage to ligaments or tendons due to the impact that your hands bear when you catch yourself. Another common hand injury is tendonitis, which involves injury and inflammation of a particular tendon.
Broken Or Fractured Bones
Many types of trauma can cause you to break, fracture, or dislocate one or many of the 27 bones in your hand. Some common causes of such injuries include workplace mishaps, car accidents, and tripping and falling. The bones in your hand can be quite delicate and, therefore, easily be broken. Often, the broken bones can be treated merely by immobilizing the hand using a cast until the bones heal and fuse back together. However, some hand injuries involving broken bones are so severe that you could have to have an operation to implant hardware, such as screws and plates, to secure the bones and help them heal. These severe injuries can produce long-lasting residual effects, such as arthritis or a permanently limited range of motion in your hand.
Wrist Injuries
Wrist injuries are also quite common due to repetitive movements at work or blunt force trauma when falling. There are eight small bones within the wrist, and it can be easy to fracture or break any one of them in a fall. When you trip or slip and fall, your first instinct may be to hold out your arms and hands to attempt to break your fall. Bracing yourself in this way can cause serious fractures to your wrist bones. Wrist fractures or breaks can also happen in a motor vehicle accident if you are holding onto the steering wheel when some other vehicle hits you. The injury can be even worse if you see the car coming and grasp onto the steering wheel to brace yourself for the impact. The jolt of the collision or the force of the airbags may also damage your wrists. The most common wrist injury in automobile accidents and falls is a fracture to the scaphoid bone, which is the bone at the base of your hand, straight down from your thumb.
Nerve Damage
Some injuries can cause permanent nerve damage in the hand. The problem with a nerve injury is that the nerve may take a long time to heal and regenerate. If you suffer a nerve injury, your hand’s range of motion could be reduced, or, in severe cases, you could lose the function of your hand entirely. A serious nerve injury can weaken your grip strength to the point that your hand becomes mostly useless. Unfortunately, there may not be a specific treatment for nerve damage. You likely would just have to give the nerve time to regenerate, hopefully to the point where your hand can regain some of its function or even return to normal.
Overuse Injuries
There are several types of injuries that can happen, especially to the wrist, due to overuse. If you have a particular type of job that requires a lot of typing or other repetitive movements of the hand and wrist, you can suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome. The “carpal tunnel” is the space where the median nerve and some tendons and ligaments pass through your wrist, from your arm to your hand. In carpal tunnel syndrome, the median nerve becomes compressed, either due to the positioning of your hand or to inflammation and swelling of the surrounding tissues, causing pain, weakness, and numbness in your wrist, palm, and fingers.
Another condition caused by repetitive hand and wrist motion is De Quervain’s Syndrome. This syndrome is caused by irritation of the tendons along the thumb-side of your wrist. It causes pain and weakness in this area of your wrist, as well as a lack of range of motion in the thumb and hand.
Filing A Hand Injury Lawsuit
There are many potential causes for an injury to your hand, but sometimes another person’s negligence could be to blame. For example, imagine you’re on your weekly grocery shopping trip and, just as you turn down the cereal aisle, you slip on the wet, freshly mopped floor. In your split-second fall to the floor, you extend your arms out behind you to try to break your fall, but, almost immediately after hitting the floor, your right palm and wrist flare up with excruciating pain that continues for days. When you finally go to the hospital for an x-ray, the x-ray shows that you broke two bones in your wrist from the impact of the fall.
If you suffer a hand injury in a business or on someone else’s property, you might be able to file a claim against them for their negligence and seek compensation for your injuries, depending on the specific facts of your case. In the grocery store scenario, perhaps an employee left too much standing water on the floor or failed to put out the “wet floor” sign, or maybe they mopped the floors during a high-traffic time in the grocery store. A court might determine that the store was negligent and that its negligence caused your injuries.
If the court finds that the store’s negligence contributed to you falling and breaking your wrist, it could decide that you deserve compensation for your injuries. Even if you may have contributed to the accident in some way—maybe by looking down at your grocery list as you rounded the corner and failing to notice the wet floor—you might still be able to recover at least partial damages for your injury. Such damages could include compensation for your medical bills and lost wages and damages for your pain and suffering.
While there are many ways someone’s negligence can cause or contribute to a hand injury, some of the most common cases we see as hand injury litigators are the following:
- Car and truck accidents: Every time you get behind the wheel and drive the roads and highways, you risk being in a car or truck accident. No matter how safely you drive, there will always be someone else out there driving recklessly and carelessly, going too fast and risking the health and safety of themselves and other motorists. Their recklessness can result in a serious car accident for you. Often, we see hand and wrist injuries due to our clients’ hands tightly gripping the steering wheel when another vehicle hits them. The airbag deployment after an impact produces similar injuries, particularly to the wrists.
- Slip and fall injuries: When someone slips or trips and then falls, their immediate reaction is typically to put out their arms to try to break the fall. While an understandable instinct, this puts all of the force and pressure of the fall onto their hands and wrists. Falling often causes wrist fractures and strains, particularly in the young and the elderly. If you fall in a business or on someone else’s property due to a dangerous condition, such as wet floors or a large crack in the sidewalk, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. An experienced personal injury attorney can help you to decide whether you should pursue a lawsuit or other course of action against the person or business.
- Workplace injuries: Every year, many workers injure their hands at work. The injuries can range from lacerations, strains, or broken bones, all the way up to serious, crushing injuries or amputations. In factory or manual labor settings, it is not uncommon for employees to get their hands caught in unsafe, unguarded machinery, causing severe injuries to their hands.
Settlements And Verdicts In Hand Injury Cases
Every hand injury case is different because of the wide range of injuries that hands can suffer due to another person’s negligence. There are no two injuries alike in severity, treatment length, disability and wage loss status, and amount of medical bills involved. Bearing in mind that every case is different, the examples below of settlements and verdicts in hand injury cases can help you to understand how different cases can turn out.
- $280,000 settlement: The plaintiff was struck by a van while riding a motorcycle. He suffered several broken bones, but none were serious except for the injury to his wrist, which required surgery and the placement of metal hardware in his wrist. The plaintiff’s wrist has permanent range-of-motion issues as a result.
- $80,000 settlement: The plaintiff was struck by another vehicle head-on and suffered a wrist fracture. Luckily, the plaintiff did not have to undergo surgery to repair the fracture.
- $377,000 verdict: After a snowstorm, a nurse slipped and fell on an uncleared, slippery sidewalk and suffered a severely fractured wrist. The injury reduced the range of motion in their wrist, which affected her ability to perform her job.
- $250,000 verdict: The plaintiff was injured at work in a factory when his dominant hand was pulled into an unguarded machine. His hand was crushed, causing several broken bones and lacerations. The plaintiff’s injury required two hand surgeries to repair, but he eventually recovered to the point where he could go back to work. He filed a lawsuit against the machine manufacturer for not placing required safety guards on the machine.
