Sports Injuries in Los Angeles
Playing a sport contributes to the quality of a person’s life, and that’s true regardless of whether you are a child or an adult, and the sport is played for recreational, competitive, or professional purposes. No one anticipates getting injured, but most of us know that it’s possible. When an injury does occur, it can impact the quality of your life. The injury also impacts your wallet, forcing you to pay for treatment, rehabilitation, or other medical care.
If the injury was caused because of another person’s negligence or mistake, you may be entitled to compensation. Compensation in personal injury claims is theoretically meant to return the victim to the place he or she would be but for the injury. Making you “whole” again, however, is easier said than done. We optimize our resources, legal talent, and network to make sure compensation is just and fair. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.
Sports Injuries & Why Understanding the Injury Matters
Sports injuries can range from very minor, like a simple bruise, to very serious, like a catastrophic injury or death. Common sports injuries include:
- torn ligaments
- broken bones
- torn muscle
- strains and sprains
- head injuries.
To file a sports injury claim, you must have sustained harm that is monetarily quantifiable. In other words, the injury must have resulted in damages that you can prove.
Understanding the sports injury matters because the extent and nature of the injury will have a direct and significant effect on the amount of compensation you receive. How complex is the injury? How long will it take you to recover? How painful is the injury? Will you ever be able to play again? What is the prognosis? How much therapy or rehabilitation is necessary? These and other answers–when applicable–must be answered and understood before just and fair compensation can be determined.
Common Causes of Sports Injuries & Why Knowing the Cause Matters
Knowing the cause of a sports injury is important because identifying the cause helps:
1. Understand if you have a claim; and
2. Leads to who may be responsible and/or liable for the injury.
Examples of causes of sports injuries include:
- Defective, faulty, or dangerous products (e.g., shoulder pads improperly manufactured), in which case the designer, manufacturer, or seller of the defective product may be responsible.
- Negligent coaching (e.g., a player hit his head but was forced to continue with practice), in which case the coach and possibly the sporting organization or academic institution or another entity may be responsible, depending on the circumstances.
- Abuse or violent acts (e.g., a player assaults another player), in which case the one committing the assault and possibly the coach or the organization (e.g., if they failed to supervise properly or were aware of the abuse and didn’t address it) are responsible.
- Failure to keep the property safe and free of property hazards (e.g., dangerous equipment)
Some examples of causes of sports injuries that would likely not lead to a personal injury or wrongful death claim include things like one player tripping over another player and injuring himself or failing to buckle his own helmet and falling over and sustaining a head injury. In these incidents, the injury was caused due to no one else’s fault or no one’s excused fault (e.g., where the injury occurred while playing the sport as it was meant to be played).
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Potential Defendants in a Sports Injury Claim Made in Los Angeles
In order to be responsible or liable in a sports injury claim, the defendant must have owed a duty of care to the victim. For example, your coach owes you a duty of care to provide safe and supervised practices, but a coach of a competitive team does not owe you the same duty of care. A manufacturer of sports equipment owes a duty of care to the sports industry, including sporting participants, to make equipment without defects and according to their design. A link between you and the accused must be established that a duty of care was owed.
Possible defendants in sports injury cases include:
- Coaches
- Referees
- Sporting organization
- Sporting event organizers
- Academic institution
- Designers of sporting equipment
- Makers of sporting equipment
- Sellers of sporting equipment
- Players
- Owners of the sports team
- Property owners
- Team doctors
- Others, depending on the circumstances
When you or your child participate in a sports camp or on an athletic team, it’s standard to sign a liability waiver. These waivers of liability are designed to protect the organization from lawsuits by suggesting you assume the risk. Waivers of liability, however, do not always protect the organization. Waivers of liability may also not be applicable; it depends on how and who caused the injury, and that’s why contacting a sports injury attorney is critical. He or she can be sure that all potential defendants are identified and included in the claim.
Is Your Sports Injury Compensable?
To have a sports injury claim, you need to establish:
- The defendant owed you a duty of care.
- The defendant breached the duty of care.
- The breach caused your injury.
- Your injury is monetarily quantifiable.
If you can prove these elements, you may have a case. If you win the case, you may be compensated for both economic and non-economic damages.
Economic damages include things like:
- Medical bills
- Treatment, therapy, rehabilitation expenses
- Out-of-pocket expenses (e.g., prescriptions)
- Transportation (to and from medical appointments)
- Lost wages
- Loss of earning capacity.
Non-economic damages include things like:
- Pain and suffering
- Mental anguish
- Psychological trauma
- Anxiety
- Insomnia
- Emotional distress
- Loss of limb or organ or its use
- Loss of consortium
- Loss of enjoyment of life.
Unlike some other states, there isn’t a cap in California on the amount of non-economic damages you can recover (except in a very few cases mostly unrelated to sports injuries).
To find out for sure if your sports injury is compensable, you should consult with a resourceful sports injury attorney in Los Angeles. These types of claims can be complex cases requiring the knowledge and insight of an experienced sports personal injury attorney.
