Injuries From Sloppy Construction - Know Your Rights
If you’ve been injured as a result of poor building construction, you may be able to claim compensation from those responsible for that poor construction.
Sloppy construction can happen in connection with various initial mistakes:
· Developers can choose poor locations
· Architects can create poor designs
· Builders can use poor construction methods or materials
The results, long after the developers, architects and builders have left the scene, can be disease and injury to the people who buy or live in the structures that were poorly created.
· Burn injuries
· Radiation injuries
· Lung disease
· Impact injuries
· Skin disease
· Slip and fall accidents
Some of the sloppy conditions that have successfully been prosecuted for the injured victims are:
· Faulty wiring which caused fires
· Poor drainage which caused mold growth and bad odors
· Soil contaminated with hazardous waste or pesticides which caused lung disease
· Contaminated soil giving off radon gas which caused lung cancer
· Locations downwind from agricultural areas, which caused lung problems and allergies
· Inadequate ventilation for the number of people using the building
· Poor roof design and/or construction which allowed water leakage, which in turn caused mold and algae growth
· Leaking windows which lead to bacteria growth
· Inadequate cleanup after construction is finished, so that:
· Much dust lingers in the air, and
· Paint, carpet and furnishings are still giving off chemicals, which, in a public building with sealed windows can be hazardous
These contaminants in the air we breathe lead to rashes, headaches, breathing difficulties and general malaise.
Mold contaminates the indoor air quality (IAQ)
Mold grows from spores, which are primitive little one-cell micro-organisms. They are found wherever there’s any dead matter, such as:
· Compost
· Dead leaves
· Manure
Mold grows anywhere it can find the 4 right conditions:
· Water
· Oxygen
· Nutrients
· Temperatures between 400F and 1000 F
Buildings contain oxygen, food (dead organic materials like paper, wood and fabric), and usually the right temperature. When water leaks into a building, the last requirement is in place. Now the mold is all set to go. If the temperature goes wrong, the mold can go dormant until it’s right again, and then resume growing.
Effects of mold on people
There are over 100,000 kinds of mold, and they haven’t all been studied. So we don’t know how many of them can cause infection in healthy people. It could be thousands. We do know that if a person has a compromised immune system, they’ll be more susceptible.
The most frequent problems that molds cause for susceptible people are asthma and allergies. There’s great individual variation in how we all react to molds, and this makes it hard to decide on what a safe level of exposure is.
We can be “exposed” to mold spores by:
· Breathing them in – e.g., from mold in the basement giving off a musty smell
· Eating them – e.g., from vegetables grown with backyard compost
· Absorbing them through our skin – e.g., by touching mold on a wall
Earthquakes
As destructive as they can be, earthquakes also have a positive side. That’s because afterwards, many building experts examine the damage and try to learn more about how to construct safer buildings.
One of the recurring finds has been that much damage was because of poor workmanship and poor quality control of structural materials. More inspections during construction could have prevented much of the damage.
Stairs
A fall down a flight of stairs can cause serious injury and even death, yet such incidents are not often reported by media outlets. Some reasons for this:
· About half of them happen in private homes as single incidents, not worth reporting
· Of the other half, those incidents related to a triggering event such as a fire are reported as a fire story, not a staircase fall story
A fall down a staircase is not necessarily the person’s own fault, although many of us feel that it must have been. There are many warning signs placed at stairs, such as:
· Low headroom
· Slippery When Wet
· Broken step
· Steep stairs
· Hold On
But what really should be done instead of hanging a sign is to fix the problem. This negligence has led to many fall injuries. Some of those people have consulted a personal injury lawyer, but we can assume that many have not.
Assert your rights
If you’ve been injured by faulty building design or construction, or poor location of the building, it would be a good idea to consult with an experienced jtrucks.com/jtrucks.htm personal injury attorney as soon as possible.
Keep in mind that there may be a statute of limitations running. If you do decide to file a claim, much work will have to be done to prove that your injury was caused by the poor construction or design.
Your attorney will have to contact expert witnesses, dig up a lot of information about the particular circumstances of your injury, and talk to a lot of busy people (and possibly reluctant people too, who won’t want to be held accountable). Delay in getting started on a possible lawsuit could limit this research time and negatively affect your attorney’s effectiveness.
Some helpful things to be doing while you think about things and look for the right attorney are:
· Keep all your medical receipts and prescriptions
· Take photos if possible, to document the physical conditions
· Have photos taken of your injury(ies)
· Obtain the names and contact information of anyone connected to the faulty construction, such as builders, developers, contractors and sub-contractors
· Keep all correspondence you might exchange with the relevant people
· If the sloppy construction has affected not only you, but others you know, such as other family members, neighbors, or co-workers, write down their names and contact information and talk to them about any injury they’ve suffered.
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