Charlotte Injury Lawyers Blog
What Does Negligence Mean in a Personal Injury Claim?
Millions of people each year are hurt in accidents that are not their fault. When someone is seriously hurt as the result of someone’s negligence, they may be owed compensation for their injuries. Negligence is an essential factor in personal injury claims. In vehicle accidents, for instance, you must prove that the other driver was negligent and caused your injuries. It is helpful to understand how negligence plays a role in personal injury cases.
What is Duty of Care?
Everyone has a responsibility to take care of themselves while driving and performing other activities. In the law, this is called a “duty of care.” Whenever someone does anything, they have a legal obligation to act responsibly towards others. They cannot do something that could be dangerous or harmful to others. A person must act in a way that a reasonable, prudent person would act under the same circumstances. This is called a standard of care. Some people have a higher standard of care, such as professionals or highly trained people like doctors.
Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matt Arnold answers the question: “What can you sue for in a personal injury case?”
Breach of Duty of Care
To prove negligence, you must establish that the person had a duty of care, breached the duty of care, and suffered serious injuries as a result. The person must have done something or failed to do something that caused a failure to take reasonable care. In vehicle accidents, you may prove a breach of duty of care, for example, with a traffic citation for speeding. A traffic citation is an example of “negligence per se,” in which a duty of care is assumed by the driver.
Causation
Another important aspect of a personal injury claim is causation. You must show that you had actual injuries that were caused by the negligence of another. For this reason, it is important to seek medical treatment as soon as possible after an accident. If you wait too long, it may be harder to prove that your injuries were the result of the accident. It is also essential to handle your specific injuries and not previous injuries that occurred prior to the accident.
Contributory Negligence
North Carolina utilizes the rule of contributory negligence in personal injury cases. In every accident, a portion of negligence is ascribed to each party. Only a person who was not negligent in the accident can collect on a personal injury claim. Therefore, if you are even partly responsible for the accident, you will not be able to win a claim. Your attorney will review the details of the case and help ensure that negligence was properly assigned to each party.
Damages
Damages are the actual injuries and harm that you suffered as a result of the accident. Damages include economic, non-economic, and punitive. Economic damages are those that have a specific cost associated with them. Some examples of economic damages are medical bills and lost wages. Non-economic damages are damages that you suffered that are not easily quantifiable. For instance, pain and suffering, and loss of consortium are types of damages. The judge may order punitive damages as punishment in some circumstances.
If you or a loved one was hurt in an accident that was not your fault, you may be owed money for your damages. Call us today at Arnold & Smith, PLLC, at (704) 370-2828 for a free initial consultation with our legal team.
The skilled personal injury attorneys at Arnold & Smith, PLLC are dedicated to maximizing the financial recovery and obtaining justice for every personal injury client injured by another party’s negligence. The issues our personal injury clients may be facing include, but are not limited to, slip and fall injuries, wrongful death, product liability, catastrophic injuries, dog bite claims, car and truck accident injuries, motorcycle injuries, traumatic brain injury (TBI), nursing home negligence, spinal cord injury, boating accidents, and defective medical device injury. Our personal injury attorneys understand the devastating impact such an injury can have on a person’s life, and that the effects so often go beyond physical pain and suffering. The personal injury attorneys at Arnold & Smith, PLLC are dedicated to helping clients determine the strength of their claims, and to aggressively pursuing the means necessary to achieve the best possible end result for each client’s particular situation.
Source:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/damages
Image Credit:
https://www.freeimages.com/photo/ouch-1434056
See Our Related Video from our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ArnoldSmithPLLC/videos
See Our Related Blog Posts: