Autumn is a season of joy, happiness, and thanksgiving. A time for making memories with family and for cherishing moments with the people you love most. This was exactly the experience our client set out to create for her family last fall.
As many people do here in South Carolina, our client had planned an outing to a local farm festival for her children and grandchildren. The day couldn’t have been more perfect. A brisk breeze, just cool enough, filled the air, and the leaves on the trees created a gorgeous canvas of crimson, orange, and golden yellow. The festival was filled with fun activities for her grandchildren to enjoy, including apple picking, face painting, and a hayride for the whole family. Fresh apple cider scented the land around them as the entire family enjoyed a truly picturesque day. But then, everything changed.
Our client and her grandchildren had just finished a ride through the farm atop a hay wagon filled with bales of hay and laughing children. As the ride came to a stop and the driver announced that it was safe for people to begin unloading, the grandmother helped her family down from the wagon and started to step off herself. Suddenly, the tractor pulling the hay wagon lurched forward unexpectedly, knocking her off balance and causing her to fall to the pavement five feet below. The bones in her knee were shattered, and several of her tendons torn. What had started as a perfect fall day was now a nightmare for our client and her family.
The grandmother, in excruciating pain, was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Upon examination, her doctors informed her she would need a full knee replacement but even with the surgery would never walk the same again. She would be disabled for the rest of her life, unable to spend time with her family in the same capacity she’d enjoyed doing for decades. Not only was she facing mountainous medical expenses, but she was also burdened by months of physical therapy and the task of upfitting her home to accommodate for her new disability. Overwhelmed and terrified, she reached out to our injury lawyers at Guest & Brady.
Luckily for her, the farm where her injuries took place was insured against accidents such as this, so her immediate expenses would be covered in full. But our primary concern, beyond immediate care, was to help her navigate her new life as a disabled person. Her mobility was severely impacted by the injury, and she would require the help of wheelchairs and walking aids for the rest of her life. The grandmother’s home needed to be upgraded to include features such as wheelchair ramps, hand bars, and various fire safety measures. We were able to help her identify the right people to upfit her home with this new hardware and ensure that she would be able to live safely from day to day.
While our team helped the grandmother put together a life care plan for living with her disability, we also ensured that her received the best care possible to help her recover. During the process of her recovery, she visited several specialty doctors to complete her treatment and received a full knee replacement surgery, which greatly improved her degree of disability. Guest & Brady helped our client determine the right doctors and treatment facilities every step of the way so that she could focus on relaxing and healing after her injury.
Sadly, the grandmother is still affected by her injury today and will be for the rest of her life. However, Guest & Brady ensured that she was able to receive the greatest care possible for her immediate injuries and her future care. Our lawyers resolved the entire case without a lawsuit or trial and negotiated a compensation for her that covered the cost of her treatment, physical therapy, and upgrades to her home, and it also left her with a considerable amount of money to cover newly acquired living expenses from month to month.
As a firm, Guest & Brady took care of all legal actions, negotiations, and logistics so that she could focus on her recovery and adjustment to a new lifestyle. Today, our client has healed from her surgery, successfully completed her physical therapy, and is living with her disability in the most convenient way possible. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to help her navigate such a stressful and uncertain circumstance and to have seen her through to the other side.
