Personal injury law covers situations in which someone’s health and wellbeing has been adversely impacted due to negligence on behalf of another party, including car accidents, slip and fall claims, assaults and injuries caused by defective consumer or pharmaceutical products.
Tort Law encompasses legal requests to address harm consequences such as medical bills and income losses. These cases fall under this legal theory known as “tort Law.”
Damages
Personal injury lawsuits seek compensation for damages that have been sustained as the result of someone else’s negligence, such as medical expenses, property damage, lost wages/future earnings and pain and suffering. Damages are typically quantified using calculations that factor in actual expenses incurred or formulas that assess severity.
Non-economic damages, including pain and suffering and any adverse effect caused by an injury on its victim’s life, are more difficult to assess. A plaintiff will usually need to submit evidence such as post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis or any mental health records associated with an incident as proof.
Awarding damages should put a plaintiff back into their original position had the accident never taken place, which can make assigning a dollar value difficult. Attorneys often consult print and online resources for similar cases in order to ascertain what juries awarded them in similar situations.
Causation
Personal injury lawsuits (commonly referred to as torts) involve an injured party (the plaintiff) seeking compensation from those responsible. For success, they must prove that the defendant’s actions led directly to their injuries; this process is known as causation.
Proving causation in multi-party cases can be complex. A plaintiff must establish both actual cause (commonly referred to as cause-in-fact) and proximate cause. Actual cause is easier for a plaintiff to demonstrate since he or she simply needs to show that an injury would not have happened without defendant action or inaction.
Example: An employee neglected to place a wet floor sign at your workplace and you slipped and fractured your arm as a result. Your injury attorney could use evidence like witness testimony and police reports as well as comparative negligence as proof of this connection between their negligence and your injury. Sometimes however, intervening factors make direct causation harder to establish and this defense applies.
Negligence
Negligence occurs when an individual fails to act with reasonable care under similar circumstances, whether through intentional acts or omissions. Unfortunately, most personal injury claims involve negligence as one factor.
For your negligence case to succeed, you must prove three elements. First, they owed you a duty of care that they breached. Second, that their breach directly caused harm – this latter element being known as causation.
Breaching one’s duty of care may involve almost any act that puts you at risk, from reckless driving such as running red lights or weaving between lanes, healthcare practices such as ordering tests based on patient symptoms inappropriately and property owner negligence such as failing to clear ice and snow from public sidewalks where someone slips and falls, to failing to clear snow away when someone slips and falls.
Your lawyer must show that you experienced damages, both monetary and non-monetary in nature. These may include medical bills, lost wages, property damage (such as your car or other items), pain and suffering, mental anguish and diminished quality of life.
Strict Liability
Sometimes people are held strictly liable for actions or products that result in injury without needing to prove negligence. For instance, those using dangerous explosives during construction could be held strictly liable if any explosion results due to noncompliance with all safety protocols.
Strict liability cases, also known as cases involving abnormally dangerous activities, must meet three requirements under tort law: they must prove that an activity was inherently risky and the harm it caused was predictable; additionally, this injury must have come directly from performing the activity itself.
Strict liability cases are complex, and require the assistance of an experienced legal team. Personal injury lawyers understand the laws related to strict liability and can assist injured people in receiving any compensation they deserve. At Munley Law we provide free consultations for our cases – with years of experience, proven track records, resources and knowledge as well as our nationally-renowned reputation you can count on us for exceptional results in any of your matters.
