Chicago is a busy city, and its residents are known for embracing a day-to-day hustle. However, as with any busy city, tragic and often preventable accidents happen within its borders every single day. When tragedy strikes you, you can hire a personal injury lawyer to help you gain the restitution that you deserve. Here are five lesser-known types of Chicago personal injury lawsuits that you could potentially find yourself involved in:

1. Medical Malpractice Cases

When we go to a doctor’s office or hospital, we expect the professionals there to give us their undivided attention. Unfortunately, there are many cases where medical professionals end up acting in a negligent, or simply abusive manner, leading to catastrophic injuries or lack of care scenarios. When this occurs, Chicago residents can file a personal injury lawsuit to hold the medical professionals who abused their trust accountable. These tend to have huge payouts but are known for being complex (which is why they are often lesser-known and less frequently filed than other personal injury suits). With the right Chicago personal injury lawyer, however, you can win your medical malpractice case, and gain the funding you need to take care of your health from this point forward.

2. Dog Bite Accidents

Nobody wants to believe that dogs can become aggressive and dangerous. The unfortunate reality is that many dog bites happen in the city of Chicago every single day. For this reason, it’s crucial that you always treat every dog you encounter with respect, and that you never assume that Fido is simply going to be your friend as a matter of principle. Dog bites can lead to some nasty injuries and infections (and even a handful of deaths annually). When filing a personal injury suit involving dog bite accidents, you have to take several laws into account. Depending on how you feel about the dog who bit you, and how the situation came about in the first place, the way to approach a dog bite-related personal injury lawsuit can differ drastically, so be sure to consult a professional before pulling the trigger on these cases.

3. Wrongful Death Lawsuits

Wrongful death lawsuits are the most tragic type of personal injury lawsuit out there. Because the victims in these cases are deceased, someone close to them has to file them on the victim’s behalf. Typically, this will be either the victim’s spouse, adult child, or legal rep. However, there are rare cases where other parties may be legally qualified to file a wrongful death lawsuit on a deceased victim’s behalf. These lawsuits are incredibly emotional and can be particularly difficult to navigate. For this reason, it’s highly recommended that anyone involving themselves in a wrongful death lawsuit hire a lawyer who can dedicate themselves fully to the case. This allows the lawyer to take on the emotionally trying tasks at hand, and this choice will also boost your chances of receiving as large of a settlement as humanly possible. After all, what price can we reasonably place on a human being’s life (let alone a human that we loved)?

4. Defective Product Lawsuits

One of the rarest personal injury lawsuits Chicago lawyers deal with, defective product suits tend to deal with injuries sustained from faulty or defective products. Practically any product you can think of could become the target of one of these cases under the right conditions. However, these lawsuits tend to deal with heavy machinery, automobiles, cooking appliances, and other more powerful products. After all, these are the types of products that are more likely to cause injury if they malfunction. If your lawyer can prove that a manufacturer knowingly put a defective product on the market, you could be entitled to a huge payout when it comes time to settle. Since these defective products are sometimes sent out in huge numbers, defective product lawsuits are also commonly combined into class action suits that are meant to create trust funds for the victims of said defective products.

5. Mesothelioma Lawsuits

While Chicago regulators have done their best to rid the city’s infrastructure and housing of asbestos, and have passed laws to curb asbestos use in many products, the dangerous material is still much more prominent in Chicago residents’ lives than anybody cares to admit. Prolonged exposure to this harmful substance can cause the development of Mesothelioma, which can prove deadly in many cases, as there is no known cure for the aggressive disease. If you or a loved one are harmed by asbestos and are diagnosed with Mesothelioma, you need to get in contact with a personal injury lawyer ASAP to hold someone accountable.