Personal Injury Law 101
Personal injury law is a fundamental aspect of the legal system, affecting millions of individuals each year. At its core, personal injury law deals with cases involving individuals or entities who have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of another party’s negligence, recklessness, or intentional wrongdoings. These cases cover a broad range of scenarios, from slip-and-fall incidents in a business to complex product liability issues . Because of this complexity and variety, personal injury law uses a unique and detailed vocabulary that can be confusing to the uninitiated.
Understanding personal injury law is essential. Whether you are personally affected by a personal injury case, are looking to enter the field, or simply have an interest in the topic, a command of the language of personal injury law is crucial. By mastering the basic terms, you will be better equipped to navigate this intricate area of law, helping those who are injured obtain the rightful compensation they deserve.
Common Legal Jargon Demystified
Familiarity with key legal terms will put you a step ahead of the game. Here are some terms commonly used in injury cases: negligence, liability, damages, complaints and summons, statutes of limitations, premises liability and vicarious liability, among others. Negligence is used to describe the failure to use reasonable care. It is conduct that a reasonably careful person would not perform in similar circumstances. For example, if a reasonably careful driver would not have been speeding, the driver in question would be negligent. It is the opposite of diligence or caution. Liability refers to legal responsibility and is the state of being legally liable for something. A person who is negligent, for example, "is liable for [the] breach of a duty of care" to a person who suffers an injury or harm. The liable person or entity must pay a complainant for the harm or injury caused. Damages are monetary compensation for injury or loss. Damages are paid to compensate for the loss of personal and economic interests. "Generally, monetary damages . . . are those to which the compensation will encompass the damage suffered by the plaintiff" by another’s negligence, intentionally willful act or even strict liability. A complaint is a written document setting out a plaintiff’s case. A complaint states facts showing why the defendant is responsible for an injury to the plaintiff. A plaintiff uses a complaint to request a judgment and court order against a defendant. Essentially, a complaint tells the defendant what he or she is being sued for. A summons is the court order requiring a defendant to appear in court. A court summons orders a defendant to appear in court because he or she is being sued or accused of a crime. For example, an injured plaintiff is required to file a personal injury complaint and summons in the appropriate court in order to sue the at-fault party for damages or to hold him or her legally responsible for the plaintiff’s injuries. Statutes of limitations are laws that set a specific time limit within which a person may pursue a claim. If a claim is not pursued in the time set forth by statutes of limitations, the right to pursue that claim may be forfeited. Statutes of limitations apply to both civil and criminal matters. Premises liability involves a property owner’s (or occupier’s) duty of care to make sure his or her property is safe and free from defects. Premises liability deals with accidents that occur on someone else’s property and can be due to the property owner’s unintentional negligence or failure to warn of or fix a dangerous condition on the property. Vicarious liability is when one party is held responsible for the negligent actions of a third party. In other words, an employer can be held legally accountable for an employee’s negligence.
The Meaning of Negligence in Personal Injury Claims
A central tenet of personal injury law is the concept of negligence. We’ve all heard the term, and many of us use it in everyday conversation, but few people know what negligence truly means or what it takes to be found liable for it. At its most basic, negligence is defined as the failure to use the level of care that a responsible person would use in a similar situation. When it comes to negligence in a personal injury suit, there are five elements to be proven.
The first element is the duty. For example, the driver of a car that rear ends you at a stop sign has the duty to not rear end your car. The library has the duty to provide a safe environment for you to visit and read books and study. Each person should be held accountable for their duties, and if they breach them, they should be held accountable for their actions.
The second element is breach. Continuing with the same examples above, the driver breaches their duty by ramming into your bumper when your car is at a complete stop at a stop light. The driver fails to stop their car when they have the ability to do so, thereby causing injury and damages to another person. The library does not take the necessary steps to provide a safe environment when they leave up a "wet floor" sign at the top of a rainy, slippery staircase. When you go tumbling down the stairs because the library has the worst stewards of its premises, the library should be held accountable for your injuries because they have breached their duty to provide a safe place for you to be.
There are two different ways to determine causation. The first is factual causation, i.e. what actually happened. The second is legal causation, which asks whether the negligent actor should be held responsible for the alleged harm. The driver of the car is driving recklessly and figures that he is just too close to the car in front of him at the stop light. Because he is on his phone answering a text, he takes his eyes off the road just long enough to rear end your bumper, causing you to be injured. The car reared ended my bumper, therefore the driver should know that if he didn’t stop, he rear ended me.
Legally, legal causation asks whether the driver is legally responsible. Did the driver mean to endanger the person ahead of him, were they trying to hit the car or did they have their mind on something else, like their phone? Should the driver have known that texting while driving was dangerous? In this case it is obvious that the driver was distracted by his phone, and therefore should be legally responsible for rear ending his bumper.
In this case the facts are clear cut and obvious. The driver was on their phone, distracted by the very device that is intended to make our lives easier. The car was stopped, red light in full effect. The fault lies squarely on the driver, and his liability should be easily proven in court.
But sometimes, proving fault is not so easily defined. Take the example of a person that is injured at a mall. The mall has the duty to provide the customers with safe escalators and a safe environment in general. The escalator is broken, and faulty, and therefore someone is injured while using it. The mall should be held responsible for their injuries, right?
Well, maybe not. Maybe the mall has the duty to provide a safe environment for its customers, and the escalator may or may not be considered safe. It is broken, but the mall has put a sign up indicating that the escalator is not safe to use, directing the customers to use the elevator instead. This sign should put them on legal notice that the escalator is not safe to use, and if they choose to ignore the sign, the mall may not be found liable for their injuries. If the escalator is in obvious disrepair, and they choose to use it anyway, then they may not find the sympathy they are hoping for when they go to court and tell the story that their injuries are the fault of the mall, when in reality it is likely their own fault for ignoring the obvious signs that the escalator was not safe.
Examining Liability: Who’s at Fault?
Determining Liability: Who Is Responsible?
Understanding the rules surrounding liability will help enable you to establish a strong case. While most cases include more than one party, there may be more than one type of liability that can be invoked when a crime is committed.
Types And Levels Of Liability
When it comes to law, strict liability comes in two forms: tort law and criminal law. Tort law refers to wrongs or injuries caused by one party in a civil case. Punishments for parties under this strict liability can include restitution, money damages and/or injunctive relief. Criminal law punishes more serious crimes such as a felony and are punishable by time served in a state prison or county jail. Strict liability dictates that someone involved in a crime is fully responsible, regardless of mental states such as intent, knowledge or negligence.
In criminal law, strict liability means that if someone commits a crime and it’s found that they were acting not through intent, the person is still liable and may be punished with jail time.
A party can be jointly liable, which means they’re equally responsible for the act or omission. A party can also be severally liable for committing either a tort of a crime, but their punishment may be reduced by various circumstances such as lack of intent or contributory negligence.
Liability for an automobile accident can be strict, joint or severally liable. But if someone chooses to drive while intoxicated and it results in another driver being injured, the driver can be strictly held liable for the accident and a very serious crime.
Comparative liability can be contrasted against contributory liability, and holds an individual partially responsible for an event. For example, in a slip-and-fall case, if no signs were posted on a slippery surface and someone slipped and fell, that party is partly responsible for the injury.
On the other hand, contributory liability means that the happenstance party is totally responsible for a crime or action. So in the previous example, if a slippery surface was posted with caution signs, the slip-and-fall party is responsible for damages owing to that negligence.
There are four philosophies on liability:
• Unauthorized conduct
• Authorized conduct
• Acknowledged conduct
• Negligent conduct
Different insurance companies have different views regarding what makes a party liable. As a result, there are several different views on liability and how it will be administered.
Determining Damages: What Are You Owed?
When a person pursues a personal injury lawsuit – whether it’s for a car accident, sexual abuse or a dog bite – their primary concern is financial loss. They were hurt physically, and quite often the injuries inflicted require medical care, rehabilitation and more. On top of that, they may have new demands on their time, such as physical therapy and doctor’s appointments, and their work time has been reduced, if not slowed entirely. The entire situation starts to snowball – lost wages become bills that can’t be paid, which raises interest rates, creating more bills that have to be paid on a specified due date.
The damages awarded in a personal injury claim (or, in some cases, a lawsuit) are essentially compensation for this type of financial loss. When evaluating the extent of the loss, the plaintiff’s case becomes more compelling when they are able to quantify that loss in a real dollar amount. Furthermore, the damages awarded by a jury will take both economic and non-economic losses into account, meaning that monetary awards will generally be divided into two different categories:
Economic damages are fairly easy to quantify. These damages include out of pocket expenses , such as medical bills and costs of future medical care, lost wages, damage to property, as well as transportation costs to and from medical appointments and costs of hiring people to help with household chores that cannot be performed due to the injuries. Economic damages also include loss of future earnings, and the cost of future medical care because of the injury.
Since economic damages can easily be quantified, the plaintiff will often use a multi-layered approach in order to determine a total amount in economic damages so that they can provide it to an attorney for the relevant calculation.
While economic damages are relatively simple to put a dollar figure to, non-economic damages are more difficult to quantify and can require the use of experts. These damages include intangible losses, such as pain and suffering, emotional distress and loss of consortium. Non-economic damages also cover loss of household services, loss of consortium, and scarring or disfigurement. When justifying these losses, an expert may present a dollar amount to the jury for consideration in awarding non-economic damages.
The Statute of Limitations: Know Your Timeframe
In the world of personal injury law, timing is of the essence. One of the vital components of this timing is the statute of limitations, which is a critical deadline by which you must bring your legal action. This statute is a law or regulation that limits the period within which a lawsuit must be filed in court. It exists for many legal actions, including personal injury cases. In the personal injury context, this means that you have a limited amount of time to make your claim known, and a limited amount of time to seek damages for your injuries. Failing to do so within a specific time frame can be detrimental to your case and may even mean that you will never be able to recover anything for any injuries that you have suffered. The statute of limitations, primarily used in civil cases, does vary depending on where you are. In Michigan, for example, the statute of limitations for personal injury actions concerning negligence is just three years. However, it is important to note that different actions fall under different statutes. Your state may have a different statute of limitations depending on the type of case that you are pursuing, even if it may seem like the cases are the same on the surface. It is important to be aware of these time limits and how they may affect your case. Many factors can affect the statute of limitations, including the jurisdiction and when the injuries occurred. If you are involved in a personal injury case, it is important to speak with a lawyer who is familiar with the various laws in your state and can recognize how those laws may affect your case.
The Importance of Adequate Legal Representation
Having a personal injury lawyer is crucial for anyone involved in an accident. Often, the insurance company will try to get you to sign off on the first settlement just to avoid paying what you may be owed. Your personal injury lawyer will be your best friend and ally throughout this trying process. Do not sign with the first offer, because chances are that what you deserve is so much more than what they are offering you.
What do you want to look for in your personal injury lawyer? You obviously want someone who has great results in their past. This is the most important thing, and they should be able to show you thorough documentation of their past business. You should also decide whether you feel comfortable in their presence, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with them if you want this process to go as smoothly as possible.
Conclusion: Understanding Personal Injury Legal Terms
With so many legal terms and concepts that come into play before, during and after a personal injury case, it can be difficult to decipher how to navigate the process. Knowing what you’re dealing with helps your case, so be sure to familiarize yourself with the terms and concepts defined above. However, this list is far from exhaustive, as there are many different areas of legal terminology in personal injury law , and new facets of the law are constantly being created. That said, you should not rely on your own legal knowledge when dealing with any kind of personal injury case. It’s likely that you will encounter legalese to some degree, no matter what. That’s why your best bet for getting the most out of your case is contacting a qualified personal injury attorney.
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