A 96-year-old woman with dementia died as a result of her injuries in a car accident. The woman was thrown from her wheelchair while being driven in a van belonging to an elderly care facility.
The woman, a retired teacher, was allegedly catapulted out of her wheelchair while riding in a van operated by an employee of an elder care company. Although the elderly woman was eventually taken to the hospital, she died four months later as a result of the injuries she sustained in the April 2014 accident.
The accident was allegedly caused when the van’s driver suddenly applied the brakes, causing the elderly woman to be thrown from the back of the van into the dashboard. As a result the woman sustained internal injuries and multiple broken bones.
According the eyewitnesses, the van’s driver did not call an ambulance but instead pulled into a parking lot and asked a trucker to help her lift the injured woman back into her wheelchair. The trucker and several others present in the parking lot strongly urged the young woman to call 911, but she refused to do so. Instead she took the woman back to her home and did not mentioning the accident to her family.
The elderly woman’s daughter and son filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the van’s 25-year-old driver alleging she caused serious injuries by not properly and safely strapping her passenger in prior to driving. The young driver was indicted by a grand jury for first-degree felony injury to an elderly person.
Court documents indicated that the driver failed to seek adequate medical treatment for her passenger after the accident. Furthermore, the driver’s employer did not report the incident as required by federal regulations and allegedly shredded paperwork indicating the van’s driver worked for them.
In filing a wrongful death lawsuit, the family may face several years of litigation before a verdict or settlement is reached, leaving them with extra expenses, including funeral and burial costs. If the family did not have much in terms of life insurance, or had no insurance or other alternative sources of funding, they may be eligible for a “lawsuit loan.”
The main objective in financing a lawsuit is easing the financial load on cash strapped plaintiffs and allowing them to decline an early settlement offer from a rapacious insurance company. Pre-settlement funding also demonstrates to the plaintiff that they are likely to receive the compensation they are hoping to obtain. Litigation funding may be the right financial lifeline at the right time.
Daren Monroe writes for Litigation Funding Corp. To learn more about lawsuit funding and litigation funding, visit http://www.litigationfundingcorp.com/.
