All personal injury cases revolve around negligence, your goal in all such cases is to prove that some negligence was involved and that it lies with the liable party. But what is negligence, technically? How can you assert that a party acted neglectfully and what are the prerequisites for that? This article will address all of these questions, and we aim to explain negligence in the context of personal injury law simply and effectively to help you understand the challenge ahead of you.
To preserve your edge in the legal battle that lays ahead, you should contact a competent personal injury lawyer as soon as possible and discuss the details of your case with them. This initial consultation will help you better strategize your approach in the case, allowing you to demand fair compensation for your economic and non-economic damages.
Now, back to negligence in personal injury cases.
Duty Of Care – Where It All Starts
To understand negligence, we must broaden our horizons just enough to fit in the duty of care in our discussion. This is where it all begins. All people, when engaged in some consequential activity like driving, workplace management, and so on, must exercise some caution. Since their actions affect the safety of those around them, they owe others a duty of care to others. This means that people need to practice reasonable care in routine if their actions can result in some form of harm to others.
This duty of care is merely a general principle, and it can morph into various forms. For instance, while driving on the road, a driver must not speed, drive aggressively, be drunk, distracted, or otherwise negligent. Doing so will compromise the duty of care and thus make the person negligent, and if such behavior leads to some damage to someone else, they would be considered liable by default. Thus failing to practice reasonable care is negligence.
What Is Negligence?
As noted in the previous section, negligence is when someone fails to uphold their duty of care to others around them. However, for that to apply, one must first prove that such a duty was owed, and this is one of the trickiest things to do in some cases, although not always. For instance, in a car accident case, the driver who caused the accident will be considered negligent only if they could’ve avoided the crash by acting as was expected from them.
If they were speeding or distracted, then that would be in breach of their duty of care which would make them negligent by default. To establish negligence on part of the liable party, you must first prove that the other person owed you a duty of care, then you must show that the same was violated, and then you must establish a link between the damages you sustained and the negligence.
This way, negligence will be established, and you’ll have a right to demand compensation for your losses. You simply need to prove that the other party’s recklessness cost you, and that will be it. Of course, we’ve broken it down into small steps for the sake of explaining the underlying concept. In reality, your attorneys and the other party won’t be using such complicated phrasing, the discussion will be rather simple, so don’t mind memorizing the terms discussed so far.
Proving Negligence
As for proving negligence, there is a lot that a victim can do on their end to help their lawyer establish a solid case, such as:
- Gathering information at the scene of the incident, i.e. photographs, videos, and other evidence
- Exchanging information with the liable party
- Not discussing guilt at this stage of the incident
- Asking for the contact information of any eyewitnesses present on the scene
- Reporting the matter to the police
- Seeking immediate medical attention
- Keeping track of their losses
After this, they can approach a lawyer for legal counsel in the matter and start sorting this mess out.
Bottom Line
Our personal injury attorneys, at 1Georgia, are always willing to help personal injury victims get compensated fairly for their damages. For this, we welcome all clients in free initial consultation sessions and even take up cases for people who can’t afford to pay us upfront. Throughout the whole process, we keep our clients completely informed about all that’s happening so they never lose sight of where their case is headed.
If you’re ever caught in some trouble in Alpharetta, North Atlanta, you know who to call!