Seattle Eye Injury Attorney

A Seattle eye injury accident attorney from Fang Law Firm can help you recover financially from the at-fault party.

Eye injuries are painful and affect every aspect of your life. If you or a loved one are suffering from an eye injury you may have discovered that there are activities you can no longer do because of your eye injury. Additionally, you may not be able to return to work because of your eye injury.

Fang Law Firm Can Help with Eye Injury Cases

• We win. We have a 98 percent success rate across 10,000 litigation cases.
• No up-front costs. We work on contingency which means that you don’t pay until we win.
• 24 hour return call policy. We guarantee that one of our Seattle injury lawyers will return your call within 24 hours.

How Can an Attorney Help My Eye Injury Case?

According to Seattle’s fault-based accident laws, the burden of proving liability on the part of a person at fault for an eye injury rests with the plaintiff—the injury victim. A Seattle eye injury attorney can represent your rights and best interests throughout the claims process through the following means:

• Investigating the circumstances of your injury to determine the liable party and calculate your economic and non-economic damages
• Proving the at-fault party liable by showing that they owed a duty of care to take reasonable actions to prevent your injury, such as a doctor’s duty to treat you in the industry-accepted standard of care or a driver’s duty to follow traffic laws
• Using evidence to show that the at-fault party breached their duty of care through an act of negligence, wrongdoing, or recklessness
• Showing that the breach directly caused your eye injury
• Proving that you sustained significant damages from the injury

An experienced attorney will draft a compelling demand letter to the appropriate insurance agency, engage in strong negotiations for a settlement that fully covers your damages, or represent you in courtroom litigation if the insurance company won’t offer an appropriate settlement.

What Compensation Can I Recover?

Injuries can quickly become expensive, especially painful eye injuries that can cause vision impairment. A successful eye injury claim can help victims recover compensation for the following damages:

• Medical expenses
• Future medical expenses if you require procedures or ongoing treatment
• Lost wages and any future lost wages for planned treatment
• Diminished earning capacity if your eye injury negatively impacts your ability to work in your usual capacity
• Pain and suffering
• Disfigurement

While financial compensation can’t undo an injury or erase your pain, it can open doors to the best medical care, pay for cosmetic treatments to improve the appearance of a damaged eye, and finance home health aides if required. It can also ease financial burdens while you take time to heal from your injury.

Intangible damages such as pain and suffering and disfigurement may be more difficult to assign a monetary amount, but they are often the most harmful aspect of an injury. If an eye injury causes great pain or permanent disfigurement, you deserve compensation. Financial compensation is the only way the courts have to redress this type of wrong.

How Can I Recover Compensation After Sustaining an Eye Injury?

A Seattle eye injury lawyer from Fang Law Firm can help you file a personal injury lawsuit in Washington state court against the at-fault party. You can file a negligence lawsuit or a medical malpractice lawsuit to recover damages related to your injury.

A Negligence Lawsuit

In order to prevail under a negligence lawsuit, you and your eye injury attorney will need to prove that the at-fault party’s actions were careless and resulted in your injury.

A Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

If your eye injury resulted because of the negligence of a medical professional, you can bring a medical malpractice lawsuit. You and your attorney will need to prove that the medical professional violated a duty of care, and that violation resulted in your injury.

In the event that you and your attorney are successful at trial, the jury can award you economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages are quantitative damages related to your injury such as medical bills, rehabilitation bills, and lost wages. Non-economic damages are damages for pain and suffering resulting from your eye injury.

Once a jury has handed down a damage award, the at-fault party is obligated to pay you.

How Long Do I Have to File an Eye Injury Claim?

Every state places a limit on the amount of time an injury victim has to file a claim for an injury. In Washington, eye injury victims have up to 3 years from the date of the accident in which to file a claim. The only exceptions to this statute of limitations are in the following circumstances:

• If the victim didn’t realize they had an injury until later or didn’t connect the injury with the incident until some time later, in which case the 3-year clock begins on the date they discovered or should reasonably have discovered the injury and its cause
• If the victim was under age 18 when the incident occurred they have 3 years after they turn 18 to file a claim

The state’s statute of limitations helps ensure the court litigates a case while evidence is available and fresh and protects defendants from living under an ongoing threat of lawsuits.

What is an Eye Injury?

An eye injury is any damage to the eye or eye socket. Eye injuries can last a few days, a few weeks, or a lifetime. They are very uncomfortable and can range from irritation to a complete loss of vision. The types of eye injuries we typically see include:

• A scratched eye
• A foreign object in your eye
• Swelling
• Bleeding
• Traumatic Iritis
• Orbital fracture

Suffering damage to an eye is a frightening and painful experience. Even worse, serious damage can compromise vision, cause blindness, or leave the victim with permanent disfigurement.

Types of Traumatic Eye Injuries

Eye injuries occur in many ways and can cause significant damage to vision and appearance. Some types of eye injuries include:

• Penetrating wounds
• Foreign body injuries
• Blunt-force trauma
• Broken orbital bone
• Subconjunctival hemorrhage
• Chemical burns
• Corneal abrasions
• Scratches and lacerations
• Eyeball puncture
• Acute hyphema (bleeding between the iris and cornea)
• Optic nerve damage

Eye injuries can have serious impacts. Victims could experience pain and visual impairment that’s temporary and requires significant medical care and recovery time, or permanent injuries with significant negative impacts on appearance and quality of vision. In some cases, an eye injury could cause permanent blindness in one or both eyes. When this type of serious injury occurs due to an act of negligence or recklessness, the party at fault must compensate you for damages, typically paid through their insurance policy.

Causes of Eye Injuries

Eye injuries are common. The most common ways we see eye injuries occur include:

• Work-related eye injuries
• Sports
• Exposure to harmful chemicals
• Physical eye injuries
• Eye strain
• Car accidents
• Injuries from contact lenses or glasses
• Lasik surgery
• Hospital negligence

What Conditions Do Eye Injuries Cause?

Not only are eye injuries painful and traumatic, but they can also lead to serious eye conditions that may require ongoing treatment or result in damage to vision. The following conditions can quickly become expensive and have lasting negative impacts:

• Blurred vision
• Double vision
• Loss of visual acuity
• Compromised peripheral vision
• Partial vision loss
• Total vision loss (blindness)
• Eye loss

If you or a family member suffered one of the above conditions due to a preventable eye injury caused by negligence or malpractice, you deserve compensation for the significant harm you’ve suffered.

Eye Injury Statistics

Eye injuries are common workplace injuries.

• According to the CDC, approximately 2,000 workers sustain eye injuries in the U.S. each day, making up nearly 45% of workplace head injuries. Around 90% of these injuries are entirely preventable by using appropriate eye-safety gear.
• Studies show that 70% of workplace eye injuries are caused by flying debris or sparks. While eye injuries can happen in offices and educational environments, 61% of eye injuries occur in manufacturing jobs.
• OSHA estimates that eye injuries cost Americans approximately $300 million per year in lost productivity and workers’ compensation.

Children also suffer a significant number of eye injuries each year. Accidents involving exposure to household products cause 125,000 eye injuries annually in the U.S., commonly occurring in children. Children also experience eye injuries during their sports activities with 43% of sports-related eye injuries occurring to children.

When we see an eye doctor, we trust them with one of our most sensitive body parts and our vision, which is an essential part of life, yet an average of 10% of eye doctors face malpractice lawsuits each year for eye injuries caused by procedures such as Lasik surgery and cataract removal. Because the law holds doctors to a special standard of care with a requirement to treat patients at the industry-accepted level of care, a doctor is liable for damages if a mistake or negligence during a procedure results in harm to a patient’s eye.

Recovery for an eye injury can happen without hospital intervention but more severe eye injuries can result in surgery, corrective lenses, or complete vision loss. You shouldn’t have to pay for an eye injury that resulted from someone else’s actions. A Seattle eye injury lawyer can help.

What to Do After an Eye Injury

Few accidents are more alarming than an injury to the delicate eye area or to the highly sensitive eye itself, but if an injury occurs, it’s important to keep a cool head and do the best you can to protect your physical and financial future by taking the following steps:

• Don’t try to remove penetrating objects such as a sliver of glass or a fish hook, but instead, hold a cloth loosely over the eye and seek immediate emergency medical attention
• If you’ve sustained blunt force trauma to an eye with damage to the eye itself or the orbital bones surrounding the eye, hold an ice pack lightly against the eye and seek medical attention immediately
• If you’ve suffered an abrasion or scratch in the eye, don’t rub the eye or cover it, since rubbing can worsen a scratch, and covering the eye before treating it can foster bacterial growth. Instead, cover the eye loosely with a clean cloth and seek medical treatment as soon as possible
• Seek emergency medical care if you have a sudden noticeable change in vision, severe eye pain, an eye puncture, bleeding from the eye, eye swelling, a foreign body lodged in the eye, pain in the bone around the eye, or a torn eyelid

When an injury occurs due to the negligence of someone else, be sure to use your phone to take photographs of the accident scene, and your injury and collect the contact information of the party at fault, and any eyewitnesses to the accident. Keep all medical records, including a doctor’s report documenting the injury, treatment, and prognosis, and your medical bills. Ask for a copy of the accident report from the police, workplace, or commercial property where the injury occurred, and then call a Seattle eye injury attorney.

Call Our Seattle Eye Injury Lawyers Today

Our eye injury attorneys have decades of experience in accident and injury litigation. We will work hard to ensure you prevail at trial. We won’t leave you hanging either, our dedicated eye injury attorneys will work hard on your case and keep you informed of its progress through the entire process. Call us today at (206) 489-5140 for a free case consultation. One of our knowledgeable eye injury lawyers in Seattle is standing by to review your case and chart a path to financial recovery.