winter injuries - file a personal injury lawsuit?

winter injuries - file a personal injury lawsuit?

The VA Injury Service-Connection Confusion Unraveled

by Franklin Vasquez

If you've received a denial or request for information from the Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA), a sometimes confusing and often frustrating process has already begun. Whatever you gave the VA wasn't enough for an approval, and you need to either file and appeal or deliver the information that they want. Unfortunately, some of the denial language can be vague at best, but by understanding a few traits of the claim system, you can work closer to claim success.

Service-Connection Can Make Or Break Your Claim

For the VA to give you any money or significant medical assistance, your injury needs to be categorized as service-connected. This means that your injury or condition must have been caused during military service. It can also mean than an old condition was made worse by military service.

Military service can be confusing to many people, as it may sound like a work-related issue. Military service-members are on duty 24/7, and this goes for your ability to be injured. It doesn't matter if you were injured by a mortar strike, shocked by electrical equipment or hit by a car at home on leave; if you were in the military, the injury can be service-connected.

If your injury happened after military service, it's simply not related to the military and becomes a civil issue. If you're in doubt or if you were injured mere days after military discharge, ask a personal injury attorney first.

The easiest way to prove your condition's worth is to have medical reports from your military days. Official medical records should show what happened to you, how severe it seems and the treatment you received. From there, the VA can clearly connect an old condition with a current complaint.

Your current injury or condition complaint must be related to the medical records, which is an area that can become surprisingly confusing. Breaking your leg can be a clear cause of a limp or leg pain later in life, but some temporary issues may be less difficult to prove.

Old Evidence Versus New Proof

Hitting your head during military service can cause problems, but it can also be difficult to prove. If you suffered head trauma and were treated for it, your fate rests not only with the medical personnel treating you, but the medical personnel writing in your record.

A basic entry such as "Service member injured head during fall. Administered pain medication" could be read as a need for compensation or a basic injury that may not be convincing. Your case may have been better if the medical personnel suspected a concussion or other significant details and wrote down that information.

Your case may even be worse if you discover that nothing was written at all--a problem that many veterans run into, since they may not have medical record access until after leaving a tour of duty or the military. If you lack old evidence or if the old evidence is weak, you'll need to build new evidence.

A personal injury lawyer can help you by researching your medical record, service record (both of which can be requested from the National Archives) and interviewing parts of your military past. The lawyer also has access to skilled medical professionals who know how to document your condition in a way that is compatible with the VA claim system. These professionals may even be able to give a scientific estimate of the time of your injury.

Contact a personal injury lawyer, like those at Lerner, Piermont & Riverol, P.A., to begin planning your appeal and work towards faster, comprehensive claim success.


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About Me

winter injuries - file a personal injury lawsuit?

You are walking down the sidewalk on a brisk winter day and before you know it, you are clobbered by an avalanche of snow that has fallen from the roof above. Although this may be funny to watch on videos, it is never an experience that anyone wants to endure. Serious injuries are sustained every single winter because of the neglect of property maintenance by business and home owners. My husband was seriously injured by a snow avalanche off of a roof and we were left with no choice but to hire an injury attorney to help us recover his lost wages and enough money to pay for the medical treatments he will need for the next several years. My site contains advice and information that can help you get through the legal process of a personal injury lawsuit.