Accident and Injury Frequently Asked Questions

Maritime law establishes what you may recover after an Atlantic fishing accident, but it does not guarantee your recovery. The law does not guarantee that the parties responsible for paying for your Atlantic fishing accident recovery will do so without being encouraged, or required, to do so.

A Lawyer Can Make Sure Your Rights are Protected

You do not want to risk leaving money on the table. If you fail to make a full legal recovery then you could end up in financial trouble when you have high medical expenses and little or no income due to your injuries. You can help prevent this from happening by contacting a maritime lawyer to help you make a fair recovery.

Those responsible for paying your maritime damages have professionals working for them. Those professionals are hired to protect their rights and to make sure that they don’t pay more than they owe or pay frivolous claims.

You deserve to have someone looking out for your legal rights and best interests. You deserve to have someone fight to get you the recovery that the law allows.

Hiring a lawyer will not prevent you from returning to work as a commercial fisherman in the future. Instead, a lawyer will make sure that your rights are protected so that you can recover, to the extent possible, and return to work.

For more information, please do not hesitate to call us directly at 1-800-3-MAY-DAY and to read our FREE publication, Are You a Seaman injured in a Maritime Accident? Know Your Rights.

We are sorry to hear of your son’s injuries. It is hard to see your child hurting, even if you know that your child technically did something wrong.

That said, your child may not be the only one at fault for his injuries. Property owners have a responsibility to keep children who may reasonably access their property safe from harm – even if those children are trespassers.

Thus, if your child has been hurt on someone else’s property it is important to contact a New York fall injury attorney for help. Your New York personal injury lawyer will investigate what happened to your child, what the responsibilities of the landowner was, and will explain your rights and possible recovery to you.

In some cases, an experienced premises liability attorney may be able to help your child recover damages for things such as past, present and future medical expenses, rehabilitation costs, out-of-pocket expenses, pain, suffering and other damages.

In order to learn more about your child’s rights, please contact our New York City law firm today at 1-800-362-9329. Additionally, please accept our best wishes for a fast and complete recovery for your child from his trampoline fall injuries.

That depends on how you broke your wrist. Someone else, specifically the owner or manager of the property on which you broke your wrist, may be liable for your injuries in certain situations. Specifically, the owner or manager of the property will be legally responsible for your injuries if they were negligent in the construction or maintenance of the property. For example, if there was a defect in the property that was known, or should’ve been known to the property owner or manager, and the property owner or manager did not take appropriate steps to warn you of the defect or to protect you from it, then you may be entitled to damages for the broken wrist injury you sustained in your New York or New Jersey slip and fall accident.

For more information about your right to damages, please contact a New York premises liability attorney at Hofmann & Schweitzer to discuss your case. We can be reached at 1-800-362-9329 or via our online contact form.

It depends on how you were hurt. There are situations in which the property owner, the landlord, or another tenant may be responsible for your injuries.

A New Jersey or New York premises-liability lawyer will investigate the cause of your accident and determine whether the property owner and landlord knew of, or should have known of, the risk of injury. If they did know, or should have known, about the risk, then they may be liable for not taking steps to address the danger.

However, if your injury happened in a tenant’s apartment and the landlord or property owner should not reasonably have known about the risk that was created by the tenant, then they may not be liable for your injuries.

If you’ve been hurt on someone else’s property then it is important to pursue damages against the correct defendant(s) in order to protect your potential recovery. Contact us online or call us directly at 1.800.362.9329 for more information about your rights.

No, while FELA and state workers compensation have similar purposes, in that they both compensate workers who are hurt on the job, they are separate laws and they are not the same thing. FELA is an acronym for the Federal Employers Liability Act. Since it was passed in 1908, FELA has helped injured railroad workers recover damages for injuries sustained in the course of their employment. FELA only applies to railroad workers and not to workers in other types of industries.

Generally, FELA allows for greater compensation to injured railroad workers than state workers compensation laws would provide. For example, a successful FELA claim could allow an injured New York or New Jersey train worker to recover damages for medical expenses, lost income, and pain and suffering. FELA does not use the same formula set by workers compensation laws.

For more information about your potential FELA recovery, please contact an experienced New York City FELA lawyer at Hofmann & Schweitzer. We can be reached at 1-800-362-9329 for a free consultation.

Some slip and fall injuries result from a simple case of bad luck for which no one is to blame, but some slip and falls are caused by the negligence of others. If you have been involved in a slip or trip and fall accident in New York or New Jersey, then it is important to know when you may have a potential lawsuit and when you do not.

Generally, you may be able to recover damages if the reason that you slipped or tripped and fell was because a property owner or manager failed to correct a problem that the owner or manager knew, or should have known, about prior to your accident. Your New Jersey and New York slip and fall injury attorney will look to see if the property owner or manager had a legal duty of care to prevent your injury and whether that duty of care was breached; thus, resulting in injuries from a slip and fall accident.

It is always important to contact a New York and New Jersey premises liability lawyer after an accident so that your lawyer can evaluate your case and advise you as to whether you have a slip and fall case. Contact us online or call our office directly at 1.800.362.9329 to schedule a free consultation.

Maybe. Unlike motor vehicle accidents, New York slip and fall accidents are typically not reported to the police so there is unlikely to be any official police report of the accident, though it is possible in some cases. Also, if you were hurt on the property of a private residence there is unlikely to be any official report of your accident injuries.

However, if you fall and get hurt at a New York store or business, then there may be a report of your accident injuries. Some, but not all, stores and businesses have internal policies that require workers to fill out injury reports if anyone is hurt on the property.

If an accident report exists, then your New York premises liability attorney will get a copy and review the report. However, the absence of such a report does not mean that you cannot recover damages. Whether or not there is a report, your New York slip and fall lawyer will carefully investigate your potential claim and advise you of your legal rights and possible recovery.

For more information about your rights after a New York slip and fall, please contact a New York injury lawyer at 1-800-362-9329.

It can be frustrating when an employer withholds important information from you after you’ve been injured at sea. You may be angry that your employer seems adversarial and unwilling to provide you the fair damages that the law allows you to recover for injuries sustained while working on your boat.

You Should be Concerned If Your Employer Won’t Let You See the Report

It could mean that your employer has something to hide. Maybe the report has a different version of the accident than the one you reported, or perhaps the report expresses doubt about the true extent of your injuries. If you do not know these things then you may later be blindsided by your employer during your attempt to recover fair damages.

Get Help Now

You shouldn’t have to deal with the stress of trying to track down a maritime accident report while you are recuperating at Ocean Medical Center or another New Jersey hospital. Instead, you have the right to contact an experienced maritime injury lawyer who can take over the fight for you. While you concentrate on your physical recovery, your lawyer can get a copy of the accident report and take the other steps necessary to protect your legal rights and possible recovery.

For more information about your rights and protecting your recovery, please read our FREE publication: Are You a Seaman Injured in a Maritime Accident? Know Your Rights. We also encourage you to watch our free videos to learn more.

No. While the mistake of a conductor or crew member is certainly a potential cause of a railroad accident, it is not the only reason trains derail or crash. In late 2014 and early 2015, for example, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released reports about recent train accidents in the New York City area and around the country. According to the preliminary reports, some of the accidents were caused by human error such as operator fatigue and excessive speed. However, other causes were also found, including failure of safety technologies and compromised equipment.

Non-Human Error

The NTSB found, for example, that a 2014 collision between two Union Pacific trains in Arkansas may have been caused by a faulty alert. In other words, the technology that was supposed to correct for human error may have failed and instead resulted in actual harm. Similarly, the NTSB found that a 2013 Metro North accident was probably caused by undetected problems with the rail tracks. In these cases, while there may not be a person to blame, the railroad is still at fault and should be held accountable.

How Will You Know the Cause of Your Train Accident?

You can’t go out and investigate the accident yourself, but you also don’t want to rely on the word of the railroad. Instead, you want to know the truth from an independent agency and from someone who is representing your interests. If you’ve been injured, we encourage you to follow news of your train accident investigation from the NTSB and to contact an experienced railroad lawyer who can make sure your rights are protected.

You can contact us online or call our office directly at 1.800.362.9329 to schedule a free consultation.

No, there is no provision of the Jones Law that requires an injured seaman to receive treatment from a company doctor. In fact, company doctors may have an interest in getting you back to work sooner than you ready. To that end, some company doctors may fail to order the necessary tests to determine the true extent of your injuries, or they may advise you that, despite your injuries, you are able to return to your job.

In order to avoid these potential problems, our New York and New Jersey maritime injury lawyers suggest that injured seamen obtain treatment from an independent doctor whom they trust. Your doctor should be appropriately qualified and fair in his or her assessment of your injuries.

If your employer attempts to require you to see a company doctor, or if you have any questions about your rights as an injured seaman, please contact the New Jersey and New York maritime accident attorneys at Hofmann & Schweitzer for more information.