A personal injury is a mental or physical injury that is caused by negligence or a harmful act. The most common types of accidents that result in personal injury are: dog bites, automobile accidents, toxic exposure, wrongful death, and aviation disasters to name a few. These types of injuries can result in a lot of pain and suffering which may cause the injured person to take time off of work and/or have high medical bills. Filing a personal injury claim could entitle you to legal benefits such as compensation, or damages. If you are injured and need to file a claim, the state of Illinois has a time limit in which you can do so.
A statute of limitations puts a time limit on when you can file a claim for legal matters; including personal injury. The statute established a maximum time after an event, or injury, occurs that you can start a legal process because of the event. There are three types of exceptions in which the statute of limitations does not apply. The three types which are excluded under the statute are heinous crimes, fraud upon the court, and international crimes. If you are filing a personal injury claim in Illinois, there is a time frame allowed for you to file the claim.
There are different time frames for the type of claim you are filing such as personal injury, medical malpractice, or products liability actions for example. If you are filing for personal injury, you have two years from the time the injury occurred to file. A wrongful death claim also has time same time frame of two years. If you happen to be claiming medical malpractice, you have two years when the rise to the injury occurred or within two years of the date when you discovered the injury. Minors who have suffered from medical malpractice have eight years to file a claim but cannot file after they are 22 years old. Product liability actions also have a two year time limit from when the injury occurred. If you discover the injury more than two years after it happened, you can still file within two years of the date of the discovery. There is a cap of eight years from the time the injury occurred to file a claim.
If you are seriously injured because of negligence or a harmful act you should always seek medical attention. You should also contact an Chicago workers compensation attorney to help you file your claim and represent you in the legal process. Some cases may require you to go to court or fill out paperwork that can be confusing if you do not understand the laws.
About the Author: Brooke Haley marketing associate at Millon & Peskin, Chicago workers compensation attorney that practice in the areas of Civil Litigation, Workers’ Compensation, and Personal Injury. Millon & Peskin is a General Civil Litigation Practice with the goal of representing the interests of injured workers, throughout all applicable Courts within the State of Illinois. For more information, please visit http://www.millonpeskin.com.
