There are lawsuits filed every single day. Many people wonder if an accident that they have been in merits a lawsuit. It can be hard to know if you have a good personal injury case. Here are some things that you will need to prove fault in a personal injury lawsuit.
1. Care Of Duty
It is important that in any accident there is a care of duty. This means that the person who is at fault has to have some sort of duty to the person they injured. There can't be any fault if the "faulted" individual had no responsibility to care for the other person's safety. For example, if someone trespasses on your property and slips and falls on the ice on your driveway, you probably won't be held at fault. This is because you owe nothing to that person. However, if you hosted a dinner party where you invited people on your property and you didn't shovel the driveway so that it was dangerously slippery and someone slipped, you could be seen as faulted.
It is important that before any personal injury case is filed that there was an obvious breach of duty. If there was no duty to the plaintiff to begin with, then there is no negligence and no personal injury case.
2. Proximate Cause
Proximate cause means that the injuries from the accident were actually caused by the accident. Naturally you would assume that someone who was hit by a car would be injured and that the injuries were the fault of the driver. However, assume that the person who was struck by the car was a child and the parent of the child was watching. While watching the parent suffered a heart attack from the stress. Because the heart attack was caused by the accident, although not directly, the hospital bills for the heart attack could be covered in the lawsuit.
3. Monetary Damages
In any personal injury lawsuit there has to be damages. This means that the person who was harmed in the accident had to experience some sort of pain that could be quantified monetarily. For example, if you slipped and fell on ice, but there were no injuries that required medical care, no clothing was ruined, but it was just painful or stressful, you may have a hard time proving damages. Although, in some cases you can get money for pain and suffering, the damages are usually proven through monetary means.
These are three things that you need for a personal injury lawsuit.
To learn more, contact a law firm like Tarkowsky & Piper Co. LPA.
Share6 August 2015
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