What is a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

What is a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

A personal injury lawsuit is a legal action, brought in court, by someone who has been injured (either physically or emotionally) by another person, usually by way of an accident, slip and fall, or a defective product. Personal injury can occur anywhere: at work, in your car, in the hospital, at a restaurant, on the sports field or simply walking down the street. Illness is also classified as personal injury in work-related and industrial diseases, from stress and anxiety to asbestosis and pulmonary disease.

Personal injury lawsuits are designed to redeem compensation for past and future medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering. The most common personal injury lawsuits involve car/truck accidents, sports injuries, work-related injuries, defective products, negligence and malpractice. These injuries can severely damage a person's future with disabling head and brain injury, spinal cord injury, back and neck injury, birth injury, knee injury, paralysis. Even dog bites can cause serious injury.

Injuries at work can also be extremely disabling; employees can sue for damages incurred from exposure to toxic chemicals or harmful materials, safety hazards, accidents due to poor equipment or negligence, wrist injury and carpel tunnel.

A personal injury attorney can help resolve your injustice. Click on one of the links below to submit your case and related injury.

Types of Personal Injury Lawsuits

An injury can occur at any time and in any place. Whether it's an on-the-job accident or a medical error or even a seemingly innocent fender bender, injuries happen and are more common than most people think. Some examples of personal injury lawsuits include the following:

Car accidents

Motorcycle accidents

Boat accidents

Slip and fall accidents

Dog bite injuries

Birth defects and birth injuries

Wrongful death

For those times when a personal injury accident occurs at work, worker's compensation may or may not cover all of an injured worker's expenses--or worse, may not be approved. In these instances, it may become necessary to obtain legal help. In addition to a slip and fall accident, listed above, accidents at work can include industrial accidents and fire accidents.

Personal Injury

Personal injury is the term used to describe physical and mental injuries that occur because of someone else's negligence, intentional actions, or strict liability.

• Negligence means the other party failed to act with reasonable care. For example, imagine you are in your car stopped at a red light when another driver rear ends you because he or she isn't paying attention. If you suffer physical injuries in the crash, those could be personal injury due to negligence. (Any damage to your car is property damage, not personal injury, because the car is an object, not a person.)
• Intentional harm means the other person set out to hurt you. This includes cases of battery, assault, and false imprisonment.
• Strict liability means that anyone involved in the production, distribution, or sale of a defective product can be held responsible if the product injures someone.

Types of Personal Injuries

There are several common types of personal injuries:

• Auto accidents
• Motorcycle accidents
• Boating accidents
• Trucking accidents
• Railroad accidents
• Slip-and-fall accidents
• Medical and dental accidents
• Sexual abuse
• Dog bites
• Injuries that occur because products malfunction or fail
• Work-related accidents
• Wrongful death

Most personal injuries fall into the category of law known as torts. Torts are a type of civil, not criminal, law. It is a way to hold someone else legally responsible for your injuries.

Negligence

Most personal injury cases involve negligence. To have a valid case, your personal injury attorney must be able to show that your injury was caused by the negligence of another party. To prove negligence, your injury lawyer must prove four separate things:

• Duty of care: The negligent party had an obligation to act prudently to avoid injuring the other party
• Breach of duty: The negligent party knowingly exposed the injured party to a substantial risk of injury or didn't even realize (but should have) that there was a substantial risk
• Direct cause: The negligent party's deliberate acts, or lack of action, caused the injury
• Harm: The injured party suffered a financial loss because of the negligent party's negligence (a medical bill, for example, would be a monetary loss)

Additionally, damages are designed to compensate someone for their injury.

Personal injury lawyer

 

Personal injury lawyer

personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal representation to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence or wrongdoing of another person, company, government agency, or other entity. Thus, personal injury lawyers tend to be especially knowledgeable and have more experience with regard to the area of law known as tort law, which includes civil wrongs and economic or non-economic damages to a person’s property, reputation, or rights.

Even though personal injury lawyers are trained and licensed to practice virtually any field of law, they generally only handle cases that fall under tort law including, but not limited to: work injuries, automobile and other accidents, defective products, medical mistakes, slip and fall accidents, and more.

The expression "trial lawyers" can refer to personal injury lawyers, even though most cases handled by personal injury lawyers settle rather than going to trial and other types of lawyers, such as defendants' lawyers and criminal prosecutors, also appear in trials.

A personal injury lawyer has numerous responsibilities in serving his or her clients. These responsibilities encompass both professional and ethical rules and codes of conduct set forth by state bar associations where the lawyers are licensed. Once licensed to practice law by their state bar association, lawyers are legally permitted to file legal complaints, argue cases in state court, draft legal documents, and offer legal advice to victims of personal injury.

Also referred to as a plaintiff lawyer, a personal injury lawyer is responsible for interviewing prospective clients and evaluating their cases to determine the legal matter, identify the distinct issues rooted within the plaintiff’s larger problem, and extensively research every issue to build a strong case. The ultimate professional responsibility of a personal injury lawyer is to help plaintiffs obtain the justice and compensation they deserve for their losses and suffering through advocacy, oral arguments, client counseling, and legal advice. Plus a personal injury lawyer may have to take his client's case to trial if a settlement cannot be reached.

Personal injury lawyers must also adhere to strict standards of legal ethics when dealing with clients. While the guidelines vary according to state, the basic codes of conduct state that a lawyer must knowledgeably evaluate legal matters and exercise competence in any legal matter undertaken. Moreover, personal injury lawyers owe their clients a duty of loyalty and confidentiality and must work to protect their clients’ best interests.