Can You Receive Compensation After a Drowning Accident?

Drowning accidents are some of the most commonly misunderstood personal injury cases, so let’s first start by debunking a few commonly asked questions about drowning accidents:

• “Drowning accidents” don’t exclusively refer to drowning fatalities. If you survive a near-drowning accident, you could be left with serious injuries and trauma.
• Drowning is not inherently a self-contained mistake. There are many circumstances in which someone else could be liable for a drowning.
• You can receive financial compensation for drowning accidents, depending on the details of your case and whether or not someone else was to blame.

Damages You Can Be Compensated For

Before you can start filing for compensation, you need to have a sense of what you can actually have covered in the wake of a near-drowning or drowning accident, which will vary based on whether death or general injuries were involved.

In the case of wrongful death, the families and dependents of a decedent can file for extensive compensation, helping them to cover funeral expenses, receive a portion of their expected wages, and receive at least some small semblance of remuneration for their permanent loss of a loved one.

Even if a victim survives, they can still end up with extensive financial and physical damages. Near-drowning accidents frequently cause long-term injuries such as brain damage, lung damages, blood toxicity, coma, chronic pain, and all manner of other medical conditions that will require extensive treatment. Even if you don’t have serious injuries, emotional trauma can manifest as phobias of water, depression, anxiety, and other cognitive symptoms, which all can require extensive counseling to treat. You can recover for those expenses, general pain and suffering damages, and also for any of the secondary losses your trauma causes, such as lost wages.

Liability for Drowning Accidents in Arizona

In order to receive any compensation at all for a drowning accident, you’ll need to demonstrate that someone else was at least partly responsible for what happened. This means that negligent drowning accidents are usually the result of one of two parties acting negligently:

• Property owners, such as if a host broke Arizona’s pool property laws, making their pool easily accessible to children who then go on to drown, or
• Supervisors, such as lifeguards and caretakers, who are somehow responsible for the lives of another and could be liable if they willfully distract themselves or otherwise ignore their responsibilities.

Arizona Personal Injury Lawyers

A good lawyer can help you gather the evidence needed to prove liability, ensuring that you have the best chance possible to receive the compensation you deserve. This makes it all the more important to seek out an attorney with specialized experience in the field of drowning accidents, as there are many laws, case precedents, and legal tactics that a more generalized legal professional might not know about. ELG’s specialized Arizona drowning accident attorneys have what it takes to help, so be sure to give us a call at (623) 877-3600 to schedule a free consultation. We’ll get you onto the right track, answering all the questions you might have while affording you the opportunity to confidently pursue compensation for your drowning injuries or death.