St. Louis Personal Injury Lawyers & St. Louis Personal Injury Attorneys
The city of St. Louis has a population of 319,294 people within an area of 62 square miles. St. Louis’s metropolitan area is a major cosmopolitan area, with a population approaching 3 million.
As inhabitants of a large and diverse city, residents of St. Louis, Missouri, are involved in a broad array of professions and activities, which are unfortunately also attended by a variety of risks. St. Louis residents face some of the worst traffic in the nation and, therefore, automobile and truck accidents are commonplace. Additionally, the Port of St. Louis is a major inland port, based on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. This equates to a variety of work-related injuries as well as claims based in maritime law.
Major corporations based or located in the St. Louis area include Stifel Nicolaus, Edward Jones, Scottrade, Wells Fargo Advisors, Energizer, Playtex, Schick, Monsanto Company, Solutia, Express Scripts, Hardee's, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental, Alamo Rent A Car, WeCar, Emerson Electric, Charter Communications, Medicine Shoppe International, Perficient, Tyco Mallinckrodt, Federated Department Stores, Ralcorp, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Boeing, and Phantom Works. Workers for these companies may be injured on the job as a result of chemical or mechanical processes, sometimes suffering devastating bodily injuries. In addition, St. Louis inhabitants face other injuries that are typical across the nation and can be potentially catastrophic. Certainly, living in a big city like St. Louis has many benefits, such as a thriving job market, restaurant scene, nightlife, and a variety of cultural options; however, it also creates a high level of risk for many of its inhabitants. It is in these unfortunate instances that a St. Louis personal injury lawyer can help you and provide the expertise to aggressively advocate on your behalf. If you have a St. Louis personal injury claim, call one of the St. Louis personal injury attorneys listed on this site for a free initial consultation.
What is a Personal Injury Attorney and what types of matters does a St. Louis Personal Injury Attorney’s practice cover?
St. Louis personal injury attorneys sometimes get the undeserved reputation of being greedy. Many people believe that personal injury lawyers are only interested in cases where they stand to make huge sums of money, and that they care little for their clients. This is simply not the case. St. Louis County personal injury attorneys’ practices cover a wide range of practice areas. More importantly, St. Louis County accident lawyers and other St. Louis personal injury attorneys play a crucial role in protecting the financial and legal rights of injury victims and their families, many times against large corporations. Just some of the matters that a St. Louis Personal Injury lawyer covers throughout the State of Missouri are:
- Product Defects & Products Liability
- Medical Malpractice
- Stock Broker & Real Estate Broker Malpractice
- Dangerous Drugs & Medical Devices
- Rollover & Crash Worthiness
- Truck Accidents, 18-Wheeler Accidents, other Auto Accidents
- Workers’ Compensation Injuries
- Maritime Injuries
- Cruise Ship Injuries
- Boating & Jet Ski Accidents
- Railroad Employee FELA Injuries
- Slip & Trip & Falls
- Dog Bites
- Bad Faith Insurance
- Government Liability - City of St. Louis, St. Louis County, & State of Missouri Liability
- Federal Government Liability
An injury can be a catastrophic event for an entire family, potentially ruining quality of life, destroying a person’s livelihood, and preventing them from working. A St. Louis personal injury attorney will step in and fight to protect your rights if you find yourself in this situation. Although your attorney will not be able to repair the physical damage you have sustained, it is very likely that a St. Louis personal injury lawyer will be able to get you deserved compensation for your injuries, which can provide for you, your family, and your medical expenses.
Why do you need a St. Louis Personal Injury Lawyer?
In most cases where someone gets injured due to the negligence of another person or company, there is insurance to cover the personal injury claim. If you have ever dealt with an insurance company in the past, then you will immediately know why you need to hire an experienced and competent personal injury lawyer to represent you in your St. Louis personal injury claim. A St. Louis personal injury attorney can help you negotiate an acceptable settlement or, if need be, take your claim to trial to get you the money you deserve in Missouri state or federal courts.
Additionally, proving a personal injury claim can be a very complicated task, particularly if you are not familiar with the legal concepts involved. Even for lawyers who are familiar with these concepts, it can often be difficult to prove causation and damages, and the lawyer may need to consult with a number of medical and scientific experts to prove the necessary legal arguments. Your St. Louis personal injury lawyer will also be able to advise you of the various theories of recovery that might be involved in your claim, including negligence, strict liability, or intentional tort. In a negligence-based case in Missouri, you must prove:
- The person or party that caused your injury owed you a duty of care, but did not live up to that duty;
- There was sufficient causation, or connection, between that person’s action and your injury to constitute a breach of their duty to you; and
- You suffered compensable damages as a result.
The analysis only becomes more complicated in a strict liability case, where you seek to hold the defendant responsible for your injuries regardless of fault, or negligence. In these types of strict products liability cases, your St. Louis personal injury attorney can help you prove the following elements:
- A defect existing in the product when it was sold made it unreasonably dangerous for consumer use;
- The product wasn’t fit for its intended use or a reasonably foreseeable use at the time it left the manufacturer’s hands;
- The defect in the product caused your injury; and
- You suffered damages as a result.
As noted, a variety of medical and scientific experts might be involved in proving these elements, and an experienced St. Louis personal injury attorney can help arrange these experts and prepare legal arguments based on your medical records.
Your St. Louis personal injury lawyer can also advise on whether claims may be brought on behalf of your family members for negligent or intentional infliction of emotional distress, or for loss of consortium. Similarly, there may be other variables involved when more than one party may have contributed to your injury. In these cases, a St. Louis personal injury lawyer may decide to bring a claim against multiple tortfeasors for joint and several liability.
To illustrate this point, consider the following: If you have been injured by a defective consumer product, the manufacturer may be liable under a theory of strict liability, regardless of any negligence involved. Other people in the chain of distribution, including the retailer or distributor may also be strictly liable for your injuries. In Missouri, joint and several liability rules make any party at least 51 percent at fault for your injuries liable for the entire amount of damages, regardless of how much fault is attributable to the other parties involved. Other theories besides strict liability might also be involved, including negligent design and/or manufacture of the product at issue. This is even without introducing the idea of comparative negligence—that is, the idea that your own negligence might, in some cases, reduce your recovery. This might occur in a car accident case, where you were 15% at fault but the other driver involved was primarily responsible for the accident.
Clearly, this analysis varies depending upon the facts of each case, and proving all of these elements can become enormously complicated. A qualified St. Louis personal injury attorney or St. Louis County personal injury lawyer can help you navigate these difficult legal concepts as well as the Missouri court system.
Finally, a St. Louis personal injury attorney or other St. Louis County personal injury attorney can help you determine what your claim is worth and the measure of damages you should seek to recover. Under Missouri law, the party that caused your injury is liable for:
- Past, current, and future estimated medical expenses
- Time off from work due to injury, including time spent at doctor’s appointments or rehabilitative therapy
- Property damage, such as damage to your vehicle during an automobile accident
- The cost of hiring help to perform household chores you couldn’t perform due to your injury
- Damages for permanent disfigurement or disability
- Emotional distress, including anxiety, depression, interference with family relationships, & loss of consortium
- Any other expenses that are a direct result of your injury
For more information on damages you may be able to recover, including damages for specific types of injuries and wrongful death, please refer to the page on Damages.
St. Louis personal injury lawyers represent not only injury victims but their families and spouses in actions throughout Southeast Missouri and the Greater St. Louis area. If you or a loved one has been injured, you may be able to recover for medical expenses as well as a variety of other damages. You should contact one of the experienced St. Louis personal injury attorneys to represent you and protect your rights.
How long do you have to file a personal injury claim in Missouri?
Under Missouri’s statute of limitations, you only have five (5) years to file a personal injury claim against the party or parties that caused your injury (with some shorter exceptions). You should consult a St. Louis accident lawyer or St. Louis County personal injury attorney to evaluate your claim and pursue legal action before Missouri’s statute of limitations has expired.
What does a St. Louis personal injury lawyer charge?
Most lawyers charge an hourly rate plus a retainer fee. These type of lawyers perform billable hours and keep records of the time they spend working on your case, and then charge you accordingly. This is not the case for St. Louis personal injury attorneys. Missouri laws regulating legal ethics allow personal injury lawyers, or “PI lawyers” for short, to execute “contingency fee” agreements with their clients. The availability of a contingency fee agreement for an injury victim is essential because, as a practical matter, it can be extremely financially burdensome for such persons to pay hourly fees for their lawyer. This is especially true when a person has been injured and might not be able to work due to their injury.
Instead, your St. Louis personal injury lawyer will usually agree to accept a percentage of any monetary recovery they win on behalf of their client. The specifics of the contingency fee agreement can vary from state to state and even from lawyer to lawyer within a state; but, essentially, a contingency fee agreement means that if the injured person does not recover anything, then they pay their attorney nothing. You can easily see how this benefits personal injury victims: not only do they only pay if they recover money, but their interests are also more closely aligned with those of the attorney representing them, who will not simply seek to rack up billable hours, but to win their case. Please contact a St. Louis County personal injury lawyer to discuss your case.
Hospitals in the Greater St. Louis Area |
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Saint Louis University Hospital
Cardinal Glennon Child Med Center
Barnes-Jewish Hospital South
St. Louis Children's Hospital
Ranken Jordan - A Pediatric Specialty Hospital
Kindred Hospital-St Louis
Clayton Health Services Pharmacy
SSM St Mary's Health Center
St Alexius Hospital
After Hours Pediatric Urgent
Saint Johns Mercy Medical Center
Olive Surgery Center
Dubuis Hospital of St Louis
Advanced ICU Care
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Forest Park Hospital
St. John's Mercy Heart Hospital
SSM Health Care System Inc.
Mercy Center
Ascension Health Inc.
Ssm De Paul Health Center
Barnes Jewish West County Hospital
VA Medical Center-Jefferson Barracks
DES Peres Hospital
Missouri Baptist Childbirth Center
St. Anthony's Medical Center
Ackert Park Skilled Care Community
St. Luke's Hospital
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St. Louis Emergency Services Contact Information
St. Louis Fire Department |
For more information on Missouri personal injury law, see
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Personal Injury Attorneys Serve St. Louis and Surrounding Cities
Serving clients throughout Eastern Missouri, including Affton, Alton, Ballwin, Belleville, Cape Girardeau, Carbondale, Charleston, Chesterfield, Collinsville, Columbia, Dardenne, East St. Louis, Edwardsville, Ellisville, Eureka, Ferguson, Florissant, Granite City, Jefferson City, Kirkwood, Lake St. Louis, Maryland Heights, Mehlville, Murphy, Oakville, O'Fallon, Quincy, Spanish Lake, Springfield, St. Ann, St. John, St. Louis, St. Peters, Troy, University City, Waterloo, Webster Grove, Weldon Spring, Wildwood, areas in the vicinity of BNSF-St. Louis, Boeing, CSX-East St. Louis, Ford Motor Assembly Plant, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, NS-St. Louis, Scott Air Force Base, Spirit of St. Louis Airport, UP-St. Louis, and other communities in Greater St. Louis.