If you suffered an injury at the hands of another, you may have a personal injury claim. Due to someone else’s negligence or harmful act you may sustain mental or physical harm. Examples of personal injury cases include home accidents, motor vehicle accidents, defective products, and failure to treat or diagnose a medical condition.
To have a valid personal injury claim for a lawsuit. a victim of an accident needs to meet the following four elements:
Duty
The person who caused the victim’s injury needed to have a legal duty of care toward him or her. This means that the defendant had to act in a certain manner towards the injured party. The person needed to act with reasonable care so the person did not sustain injuries
Breach of duty
In order to have a personal injury claim, the negligent person needed to have breached his or her duty toward the victim. The person sustained injuries because the defendant did not exercise reasonable care in his or her presence.
Causation
The court looks to the causation of the injury to evaluate how the person got hurt and whether the defendant was actually the negligent party. “Causation in fact” is a standard that assesses if not for the defendant’s actions, whether the person would have injuries.
Proximate cause, the second type of causation, states that the defendant is only liable for the injuries foreseeable through his or her actions.
Damages
In a personal injury lawsuit, the amount of financial loss you suffered are ‘damages.’ The calculation of these damages typically includes the cost to fix damaged property, lost wages, medical expenses to treat injuries and sometimes frontpay.
Although figuring out if a party has a viable personal injury case is a complicated assessment most effectively done with legal counsel, knowing the four elements of a negligence lawsuit can help.
