Oklahoma Organ Damage Attorneys
Experienced Tulsa personal injury attorneys
Organ damage refers to injury, impairment, or dysfunction of your vital internal organs. These organs include your lungs, liver, kidneys, brain, spleen, and intestines. Depending on their nature and severity, organ injuries can be serious or even life-threatening. They can also be hard to detect after an accident, which can make personal injury legal claims more challenging to pursue.
At Biby Law Firm Injury and Accident Lawyers, our Tulsa organ injury attorneys are experienced in representing Oklahoma residents who need compensation for organ injuries. We can identify everyone who is potentially liable for causing the harm you have suffered, including at-fault drivers in motor vehicle accidents, property owners in slip-and-fall cases, and anyone else who may be directly or indirectly responsible.
How can we help?
- What are the types and symptoms of organ damage?
- What are common causes of organ damage?
- What compensation can you receive for organ injuries in Oklahoma?
- How much time do you have to file an Oklahoma personal injury claim for organ damage?
- How can Biby Law Firm help me receive fair compensation for my organ injury claim?
What are the types and symptoms of organ damage?
The effects of organ damage you may experience depend in part on the specific organ injury you suffer. You have internal organs in:
- Your head (your brain)
- Your chest (heart and lungs)
- Your abdomen (liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas, stomach, intestines, colon, bladder, and ureters)
Brain injuries
Although you may not think of it as such, your brain is an organ of your body. Brain injuries are often traumatic in nature. A traumatic brain injury can be relatively mild, like a concussion, or extremely serious, such as when a foreign object enters your brain.
Symptoms of a traumatic brain injury can be mild and temporary, or significant and permanent, even fatal. Repetitive head trauma, like that experienced through sports activities or other repeated injuries, has been associated with a condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which in turn can lead to the onset of dementia.
Sometimes a brain injury can come from a non-traumatic cause. For example, an accident or an intentional act can lead to hypoxia in the brain (reduced oxygen supply) or anoxia (a complete cutoff of oxygen supply). These conditions can cause brain damage, cerebral palsy, or death, and can result in additional harmful effects on some of your other body organs, like your heart, lungs, and liver.
Specific symptoms of a brain injury include:
- Brain bleeding
- Pressure on the brain
- Cognitive damage
- Nausea
- Severe headaches or vision difficulties – also most often associated with TBI
- Lightheadedness or, in some cases, fainting
Chest injuries
Your chest holds some of your most vital organs, most importantly, your heart and lungs. Chest injuries can occur from trauma, like a car accident or a fall, or any other blow, including being struck by an object or receiving a knife or gunshot wound.
Chest injuries can lead to organ bruising, internal bleeding, fractured or broken bones in your ribcage that, in turn, can puncture organs. Examples of organ injuries in your chest include a bruised, torn, punctured, or collapsed lung, bruising of your heart or a ventricular rupture, esophageal injury, or ruptured diaphragm.
Symptoms of heart and lung damage include:
- Heart damage: Sweating, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, chest pain, difficulty breathing, accumulation of fluids, and sleep apnea.
- Lung damage: Weakness, low blood pressure, difficulty breathing, hoarseness, coughing up blood, or chest pain.
Abdominal injuries
Your abdomen contains important organs, including your stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas, kidneys, and intestines. Abdominal injuries can be traumatic, including ruptures and punctures.
A trauma injury can cause internal bleeding in the form of hematomas. A puncture wound can lead to peritonitis and sepsis, a life-threatening infection response with symptoms including tissue inflammation, organ dysfunction, and, if untreated, can result in death.
Abdominal organ damage can manifest in many kinds of symptoms, depending on the organ affected:
- Kidney damage: Shortness of breath, swelling in hands and feet, feeling lightheaded, fainting, weakness, fatigue, swollen or puffy face.
- Spleen damage: Dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, lightheadedness, fainting, pain in the upper left abdomen, or left shoulder pain.
- Liver damage: Yellowish skin and eyes, fatigue, swollen legs and ankles, loss of appetite, abdominal pain and swelling, nausea, or vomiting.
- Stomach and intestinal damage: Upset stomach, abdominal bloating and pain, bowel obstruction, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, or indigestion.
If you notice any of these symptoms, seek immediate medical attention. Internal injuries can be dangerous because they may show no evident external symptoms after the incident that caused them. Organ injuries can worsen if they are not treated promptly and properly. For example, cardiogenic shock can result if your organs and your brain are not receiving enough blood and oxygen because your heart is not pumping enough blood. Other long-term consequences of lack of treatment or delayed treatment include chronic organ failure, lifelong care, or the need for organ transplants.
Common causes of organ damage
Organ injuries can result from many causes. Here are some of the more common ones.
Trauma
Traumatic injuries can be from blunt trauma or penetrating trauma.
Blunt trauma
Blunt trauma occurs when an external force strikes your body without penetrating it. Examples include injuries from your seatbelt during a car accident, a slip-and-fall accident, or an object falling on you at a construction site.
Blunt trauma can rupture blood vessels and organs like your liver, spleen, kidneys, and pancreas. Common effects of blunt trauma include organ rupture, hematoma, and sepsis. Severe blunt trauma can lead to shock, reducing the blood flow to your organs, possibly leading to acute multiple-organ failure.
Penetrating trauma
A penetrating trauma can occur when an object breaks the skin, such as from a stab wound or impalement. A penetrating trauma can perforate your hollow organs, such as your stomach, intestines, colon, bladder, and ureters. This perforation can cause leakage of internal contents, internal bleeding, and lead to the risk of peritonitis.
Infection
Bacterial infections often produce toxins as byproducts. These toxins can affect your individual organs if they get into your blood. If this happens, it can lead to sepsis and shock.
Chronic diseases and systemic conditions
Chronic diseases can lead, over time, to organ damage. Examples of chronic diseases that can cause organ damage include:
- Chronic liver diseases like fatty liver disease and hepatitis C
- Chronic kidney diseases like glomerulonephritis and polycystic kidney disease
- Hypertension
- Diabetes
- Chronic heart diseases like coronary artery disease and congenital heart disease.
- Chronic inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease
- Chronic intestinal motility disorders like intestinal pseudo-obstruction
- Chronic respiratory diseases like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Chronic degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease
Systemic conditions and autoimmune diseases such as lupus can cause organ damage through inflammation, clotting, or direct tissue injury.
Toxic exposure
Toxic exposures can come from environmental substances, bacterial toxins, or substance abuse. These can cause acute or chronic organ injury that can affect many of your vital organs.
- Chronic drug or alcohol use can cause chronic liver or kidney failure, chronic heart failure, or chronic brain failure.
- Environmental toxins can cause chronic respiratory failure, kidney disease, liver disease, and eventually lead to degenerative brain diseases.
Loss of oxygen supply from stroke, heart attack, or shock
Your organs receive oxygen through blood flow. If anything cuts off blood flow to a body organ, a condition called ischemia, then it can lead to a condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia from ischemia can cause inflammation, tissue death, acute or chronic organ failure, or even death.
A heart attack can be extremely serious because if the ability of the heart to pump oxygenated blood into your organs is reduced, it can cause multiple organ failure, including your brain.
Shock is a sudden, system-wide loss of blood flow throughout your body. It can result from bloodstream infection, heart damage, cardiac obstruction, and allergic reactions. Unlike ischemia, shock can cause acute, multiple-organ failure.
Medical malpractice
Sometimes organ damage can come from causes like surgical errors, missed internal bleeding, delayed sepsis recognition, or anesthesia errors.
What compensation can you receive for organ injuries in Oklahoma?
If you suffer an injury due to someone else’s negligence, then you may be able to recover compensation in the form of money damages. These include economic and non-economic damages, and in less common situations, possibly punitive damages.
Economic damages for organ failure
Economic damages compensate you for tangible harm. Examples include medical bills, lost wages, lost future income, lost earning potential, prescription medications, and costs of physical therapy or rehabilitation.
Economic damages are often relatively easy to prove because you will usually have invoices or receipts to document them. Your ability to recover economic damages depends on your ability to prove them and may be affected by comparative fault or other statutory limitations.
Non-economic damages for organ failure
In contrast to economic damages, non-economic damages compensate you for intangible forms of harm. Examples of non-economic damages include chronic pain and suffering, emotional distress, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of companionship or spousal consortium.
Under current Oklahoma law, non-economic damages in most personal injury cases are subject to statutory limits. In many cases, the cap is up to $500,000, although higher limits or exceptions may apply depending on the specific facts of the case, including cases involving reckless or intentional misconduct, fraud, intoxication, or wrongful death. The non-economic damage cap also can be waived if the injured party can prove a severe, permanent injury.
Non-economic damages can be more challenging to prove than economic damages, because harm like mental anguish does not lend itself to proof with invoices or receipts. But they can make up a considerable part of any settlement amount or personal injury lawsuit judgment award, so they need to be carefully integrated into your claim for organ damage injuries.
Punitive damages
Punitive damages in Oklahoma are not commonly awarded in organ injury claims. Punitive damages in Oklahoma are available only in limited circumstances and depend on the defendant’s level of misconduct, as defined by statute.
How much time do you have to file an Oklahoma personal injury claim for organ damage?
Generally, in Oklahoma, you have two years from the date of your injury to file a legal claim for personal injury. In limited circumstances – such as certain medical malpractice or latent injury cases – Oklahoma courts may apply a discovery rule, but it is not automatic. The deadlines available for certain types of claims may differ and can cause an otherwise meritorious case to be dismissed, so speaking to an attorney sooner rather than later is always the safe bet.
How Biby Law Firm can help you with your Oklahoma organ damage claim
Most organ damage personal injury claims settle out of court. This means that your ability to negotiate with one or more insurance companies will often play a key part in determining how much compensation you will receive.
Insurance companies consider organ injury claims to be catastrophic injuries and high-exposure claims for their policyholders. This means that you can expect an insurance claim adjuster to fight your claim by using aggressive negotiating strategies and methods, looking for any way to minimize the settlement payout. These tactics can include:
- Arguing that your organ damage is less severe than you claim, and that your symptoms can be minimized.
- Arguing that you are making excessive treatment claims.
- Arguing that your organ damage is the result of a pre-existing injury or is age-related.
- Arguing that you were at least partly to blame for your injury.
- Trying to exclude or minimize your need for long-term care, like future surgeries or physical therapy, or long-term pain management.
- Using dilatory tactics like repeatedly asking for more evidence or not promptly responding to your communications, hoping to wear you down so you will accept a lower settlement offer.
- Making a quick settlement offer that is almost always for much less than you might receive if you negotiate.
- Looking for ways to cast doubt on your integrity by monitoring your social media accounts, hoping to catch you making statements or posting photos or videos that contradict your claims.
Insurance adjusters are savvy, tough negotiators whom you should not underestimate. Their loyalty is likely to their employers, so they have a vested interest in keeping your settlement compensation value as low as possible.
This is why it pays to have experienced legal counsel on your side when you are negotiating with insurance companies. And this kind of dedication is what you can expect when you hire the Biby Law Firm.
Contact our experienced attorneys in Tulsa now
At Biby Law Firm, our Tulsa personal injury lawyers have represented Oklahoma residents with many kinds of organ damage claims. Jacob Biby has been recognized by Super Lawyers, a third-party attorney rating service, for nine consecutive years for his work in personal injury law, with Patrick Collogan being named a Super Lawyers Rising Star for ten straight years for personal injury law.
Contact us today to speak with one of our skilled personal injury lawyers. We proudly serve all of Oklahoma, including the communities of Broken Arrow, Bixby, Claremore, Jenks, Sand Springs, Sapulpa, Wagoner, Owasso, Muskogee, and the surrounding areas.