Everything You Should know about Negligence in a Personal Injury Case
As a layman, you might most probably not be aware of many terms or technicalities relating to Personal Injury cases. Chances are you probably do not even know about ‘Personal Injury Cases’ either. Most of the people do not, unless they suffer from such scenarios.
In most personal injury cases, there is an element of ‘Negligence’, which can be used to prove fault and hence up the level of your compensation claim. However, like other legal jargons and technicalities, everyone seldom understands this concept easily.
The concept of Negligence is dependent upon four factors:
- Duty of Care
By Duty of Care, we refer to when a person is obligated to be careful and hence avoid injuring the other. This requires them to prevent any kind of pathway that might cause any sort of the injury to the other.
This term is rather complex to elaborate in most cases, since there are no laws governing as to how a person should act to prevent injury occurring to the other. There are no specific guidelines either, to what extent the person should be careful to avoid causing injury to the other.
However, in some cases it is easy to judge, for example, drivers are not required to cross the speed limit and will be judged at fault if an accident occurs.
- Breach of Duty
After Duty of Care, Breach of Duty serves as the succeeding element. Considering that one did not live up to their duties in preventing harm to the other, the question arises if the concerned person did anything to make up for the harm caused.
For example, if a speeding driver caused an accident and injured someone, the question would be if they tried helping the injured or simply fled the scene.
- Causation
Once it is established that Breach of Duty has occurred and the person at fault did nothing to repair the damage, the sides of both sides are analysed. For example, the speeding driver could say that they had given signals or turned on their indicator lights to let the other know but the injured person still did not care to notice their signal.
Another instance would be, if you fell off some stairs with loose hand railing, the owner could claim that you were also negligent in descending the stairs.
- Damages
Damages is something that everyone is aware of usually. Damages are inclusive of economic damages as well as non-economic damages. Economic damages include lost wages, medical expenses and others, while non-economic damages include trauma or mental anguish caused.
Need Help In A Personal Injury Case?
Personal injury cases are not something you can handle alone. You will require the expertise and assistance of a learned and experienced professional attorney in this matter, such as the top Rochester personal injury lawyer at King Law. Our lawyers are professionals with years of experience filled with successful personal injury cases. Contact us right away for assistance.