Negligence Lawsuits

The crucial element of a negligence lawsuit is the ability to prove whether or not the injury party. The 4 elements that must be proven in a negligence lawsuit include:

Duty of Care

The first question that will be looked into is whether the defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff. This sounds like a technical and legalistic term, but when explained, it makes sense. This simply means that people have the obligation to not act in a way that harms other people. Most people will owe some sort of duty of care to another. For example, if you are driving on the road in your vehicle, you owe a duty of care to others on the road to not operate your car in a manner that can harm them. Alternatively, if you own a store, you owe a duty of care to those who enter your business to not maintain it in a manner that can cause injury to your patrons.

Breach of Duty

This is often the most complicated part of a negligence case and where most of the battle will be in court. Every person has to act as a reasonable person would. The question is figuring out what the standard of care is in each situation. The answer is that it depends on the activity that the defendant is doing. For example, a doctor is going to have a much higher standard of care than other professionals would. If the case involves a truck driver, the reasonable truck driver does not speed and operates their vehicle safely. Some activities, such as police work, may mean a lower standard of care because what police officers do is useful to the public. The duty of care is not just limited to professionals. It involves every day acts that people do in their daily lives, such as driving their cars or even shoveling their sidewalks.

Injury

In order to successfully sue for negligence, one must have suffered some sort of damage from the negligent act. While this seems obvious, sometimes whether something is an injury is an issue. For example, someone could claim that they are stressed or traumatized from something that happened, and a court would have to decide whether they have suffered damage from that.

Causation

Whatever the defendant did must have been the proximate cause of the injury. The interesting thing about this is that the defendant’s action does not have to be the direct cause of the plaintiff’s injury. The test is that “but for” the defendant’s actions, the injury would not have occurred. An example of this is if one is driving and has to swerve out of the way to avoid another car that was driving recklessly. If you are then hit by a third car, the proximate cause of your injury is the car that was driving recklessly. In other words, if that driver was not driving in a manner that they were, you would have never been hurt.

Assuming that you are able to prove that the other party is negligent, the court will then look at whether you did anything to contribute to your injury. For example, if you slipped on the ice and fell, but were running at the time, the court would say that there was contributory negligence. In some states, this would completely take away your ability to recover anything. In other states, it would simply mean that the amount of your recovery is reduced by the percentage of negligence that the court assigns to you.

At this point, if you still have a viable claim, the court will start to look at the damages to which you are entitled. Here are some of the things that you can receive compensation for in a case for negligence.

• Pain and Suffering – The court will assign a monetary value to what you have been through.
• Lost Wages – Not only can you recover from past lost wages, but if you lose the ability to work in the future, the defendant may have to pay for that too.
• Medical Bills – Any out-of-pocket medical bills are compensable.
• Loss of Consortium – Your spouse can receive compensation for your injury. The worse the injury, the higher these damages can reach.

If you have been the victim of someone else’s negligence, contact The Eichholz Firm to discuss your legal remedies and whether you can be compensated for your injuries.