By now, you must be considering hiring a personal injury attorney. Or perhaps you’re just interested to know whether doing so will do you good. That’s a good decision because with a legal counsel, you will get help with the settlement or if it gets there, with the lawsuit. At this point, it is highly important to do your homework. Whatever your next decision will be, will surely affect your future. Doing your homework starts here
Personal Injury Law – What Is It?
To understand what personal injury law is, you must first understand what personal injury is. Legally speaking, personal injury is a kind of civil wrong, also known as tort, where the harm is caused to a person (as opposed to a property) as a result of another person’s failure to utilize reasonable care. Personal injury has many types, including:
- Holiday accidents
- Product liability
- Accidents in home
- Assault
- Tripping accidents
- Accidents at work
- Road traffic accidents
- Medical negligence
- Industrial disease (like peritoneal maesothelioma, asbestosis, chest diseases, occupational deafness, contact dermatitis, occupational stress, asthma, repetitive strain injury, and vibration white finger)
Wikipedia has a more thorough and easy-to-read explanation about personal injury. Read more here.
The personal injury law sees torts as legal reasons (referred to as “grounds”) to litigate the offender so as the victim can recover for the losses that were caused by the injury. This includes all the future expected losses on top of the actual losses at the present like:
- Medical expenses
- Property damages
- Pain and suffering
- Lost earning capacity
- Loss of companionship or consortium
- Emotional distress
- Attorney fees or legal costs
It must be noted that although monetary compensation is involved, this is a very superficial reason to hiring a personal injury attorney. What the personal injury law is trying to achieve is to make the injured party, or the victim, whole again. This also serves as a warning to others to not commit the same offense.
Exhibiting Liability
Another worth noting is that the personal injury law uses liability as the key factor. This “liability” is determined only by exhibiting that the individual who caused the injury did so due to failure of exercising reasonable care. It must also be shown that the said failure could certainly result to personal injury that has happened to the affected person. For instance, driving under the influence of liquor is known to result to accident. Therefore, the driver did not exercise reasonable care and instead continued on driving. If he has caused injury to another person, he, therefore, has a clear liability.
Defenses to Liability Claims
It will not be easy to exhibit liability because the person in question has all the right for defense. He might asset assumption of the risk if the injured person knew that the activity leading to injury was dangerous. Therefore, the injured party is responsible for joining in that activity and therefore also liable for his own injury and not the other way around.
Other defenses could also be used like the pre-existing condition and intervening causes. The point is, the other party will do everything in his power to protect his interests. That’s why having a personal injury attorney in this process is a must both for the injured person and the person in question.