The Three Ingredients That Makeup a Successful Personal Injury Case
When it comes to successfully litigating personal injury cases the elements that must exist in order to win damage compensation are very clear. The first aspect is a liability, either through negligence or another violation of legal duty. Second are damages to the victim’s estate. Finally, you must have a solvent defendant who can be made to pay the damages owed to you.
A more detailed explanation of these elements would include:
1) Liability: Once a defendant has violated his legal responsibility to another person, it is grounds for some liability, either a percentage along with other defendants or complete liability if that person or entity is completely responsible. In legal terms, they are responsible for any damages incurred on the plaintiff in proportion to their involvement in the harm suffered by the plaintiff. The main situation in which a defendant breaches their legal duty towards a plaintiff is through negligence, which is primarily considered irresponsible or brash actions, that has caused an “accident,” which can take on many shapes and forms.
It’s easiest to think of negligence as the means to the end, or to method through which the violation of the legal duty occurred. And there are degrees of that negligence. The most common form of negligence is simply not paying attention. When “gross negligence” breaches the defendant’s legal duty, then it is not a careless accident but in legal terms is called “willful intent.” A defendant who caused injury through gross negligence has behaved in a way he or she knew could likely result in some kind of harm, such as drinking and driving. But he or she just didn’t care. On a different note, “intentional or deliberate torts” (a tort is a legal term for the violation of a civil duty) are constituted by intentionally inflicting trauma on another human being, including assault. This brief explanation should illustrate to you how negligence is often the most common form of violations of others’ legal rights. However, it doesn’t alter the fact that the victim/plaintiff must prove negligence, or some other form of disregard of their legal duty, was the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries from which the defendant is liable.
2) Damages: This is another word for any monetary loss of value that the plaintiff has a legal right to legally claim because of the defendant’s negligence. Damages do not include specific injuries to the victim. It is a general legal term that sums up all of the harm done to the plaintiff to denote financial injuries, as opposed to physical injuries. In the instance where the victim fractured his collar bone, the collar bone is the injury. For the examples, the damages would be any monetary costs and, or, losses that result from the injury. Damages will either fall into the category of General Damages or Special Damages. More on this website
General damages are of those deemed to be non-economic. This means they are much more subjective and should be handled and presented very carefully before a jury if you want to have the best chances of winning your civil trial. Some common examples of General Damages include:
o Pain and suffering
o Disfigurement
o Loss of consortium (or partnership, this can be classified as either a professional or marital partnership)
o Emotional distress
o Physical disability (either short-term, long-term, or permanent)
Because of the subjectivity of these damages, a clear and effective explanation of your general damage suffering, to the degree that you sustained any, is a vital aspect of filing (and winning) a personal injury claim. General damages and the amount awarded for them differ with every case, even when the injuries are alike.
To better understand the subjectivity of general damages, imagine that two victims are in a blowout accident caused by defective tires where the vehicle rolled over and exploded. Both were badly burned. But one plaintiff was unconscious during the explosion. And though he suffered horrible burns, in his unconscious state he was not alert to experience the pain as it happened. But the other plaintiff was just as badly burned and was fully alert enough to experience the full and terrible agony of being burned. So even though both of these victims may end up with similar injuries and medical expenses, each experienced a different level of pain and suffering. So it is quite likely that the monetary damages each victim is entitled to would be different. See this website
Hopefully, you better understand why every accident will be different from the next and you should get an injury lawyer to help you correctly establish the right amount to demand, based on the details of your suffering and background.
3.)Special Damages: Special damages involve the actual economic cost of your accident, which makes them much more objective because the amounts are easy to assess, although this is not always the case. In an event where the resulting injuries are absolutely disastrous to the victim’s state of well-being, the attorney will not be capable of determining how much longer their client will live, which makes lost wages damage extremely difficult to calculate based on their previous salary earnings and what they might have expected to earn through future promotions, or leaving that job to take a better one. So great consideration must be given to the more technical nature of the victim’s earning potential, like changes in the job description, pursuing higher education levels or more specialized certification. All of these variables and others would inevitably lead to a higher pay scale throughout the years.
Some examples of general damages are listed below.
Wages or earning capacity lost
Court costs
Medical costs, incurred in the past and future
Damages to the family’s property
Since winning compensation from the defendant is proportionate to special damages, it is very crucial to the plaintiff’s recovery for these damages are handled with care because they will most often take the form of monetary expenses previously paid or owed by the plaintiff, or maybe even the defendant if the injury is work-related or the plaintiff has some form of insurance to defray these costs; in which case, once the plaintiff wins damages, some of those monies might be owed the insurance carrier who paid those initial medical bills.
All of the damages that the plaintiff claims to have suffered from must be accounted for. The injury attorneys at our Law Office spend a large amount of time on each case creating what is called a demand packet. This is an itemized account of all the client’s damages, which is generally submitted to the defendant’s insurance company, plus a request for a specified amount of compensation.