Negligence is a legal concept that must be proved before a person or company can be legally held and more so, responsible for the harm you suffered. This — proving negligence — is expected in most claims from injuries or accidents which includes but is not limited to slip and fall cases, car accidents, etc. A slip-and-fall accident typically occurs as a result of some sort of slippery substance on the ground—such as ice, water, oil, or even spilled food—that reduces that amount of friction between your feet and the ground, thus resulting in a slip and fall. Make sure you’ll be able to get your slip and fall claims with help of reliable lawyers like the ones at https://www.scura.com/nj-personal-injury if ever you’ve had slip and fall accident.
There are specific cases within this, like the camp lejeune water contamination lawsuit, where multiple people have been affected, some are unaware of the case, and they being victims of this case must be proven just as the case must be. Negligence insists you must prove four things in court: breach, duty, damages, harm, and causation.
In general, terms, if a person acts carelessly and in turn, this careless act causes an injury to another person; under the legal law of negligence – the person who acted carelessly will be legally liable for any resulting harm as a result of his or her carelessness. This basis for determining and examining faults is used in a lot of disputes involving an injury or an accident.
Components of a Negligence Claim
There are four components of a negligence claim. Law professionals at Herrman & Herrman insist that for you to win a negligence trial, the plaintiff — usually the person that’s injured — must prove the following four aspects, for the need to show that the defendant — the person allegedly at fault — acted negligently: these four elements include: duty, breach, causation, and damages.
Duty
In duty; the person at fault owes a legal duty to the injured person under the circumstances; when assessing a negligence claim, the very first step is to check whether the defendant owes the complainant a legal duty of care.
In some other circumstances, the connection between the plaintiff and defendant could build a legal duty. Let’s just say in a case of an accident, the defendant might probably owe the plaintiff a legal duty to act with adequate care in a certain situation – because a driver is expected to operate a vehicle safely with a certain level of care.
Breach of Duty
In the next step, the court will do its best to investigate and see whether the defendant breached a duty in any form, by doing something that a reasonably prudent person would do under similar circumstances.
The phrase reasonably prudent person is often referred to as a legal law that exemplifies how an average person would responsibly act in a certain circumstance.
In simple terms, the defendant will likely be found careless, if the average person knows what the defendant knew at the moment; that the person would have probably known that a person might have been wounded as a result of his or her actions – and in turn, would have acted differently than the defendant did in that situation.
Causation
The third aspect requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant’s negligence caused him or her an injury. In all honesty, someone might have acted negligently, but the basic truth is; the plaintiff can only recover if this oversight somehow caused the injury. Let’s just say, it wouldn’t be reasonable to sue someone who was negligently driving and at the same time texting for an unconnected fender bender that happened across the street.
Another facet of this aspect looks at whether the defendant could have foreseen that his or her actions might have caused an injury. If the defendant’s actions in any way caused the plaintiff an injury through a random or unexpected act, the injury would most likely be considered unforeseeable – and most likely the defendant will not be found liable.
Damages
This is the final element of a negligence case, and it’s called damages. This element expects that the court can compensate the complainant for his or her injury – and the compensation; is usually monetary compensation for expenses that include property repair and medical care.
Keys to a Negligence Case
Irrespective of how your accident happened, striving as much as possible to obtain fair compensation for your injuries doesn’t involve much but an application — in a simple language — of a few fundamental principles:
- If you show the other person was careless, and you were careful; the negligent or careless person must pay your injury damages.
- If a careless person causes an accident while working for someone else, then the employer will be legally responsible.
- If an accident is caused by an impaired product or dangerous property, the owner of the property or more so, the seller of the product or manufacturer will be liable irrespective of whether he or she created or caused the defect or danger.
- If you were also reckless, your right to receive compensation is reduced to the degree in which your carelessness was responsible for the accident – in other words, your comparative negligence.
- You need not prove anything, just to make a sufficient argument that the other person was careless, even if there is a valid or reasonable argument that the other person was careful.
Suffering injuries caused by negligence should not be ignored. Knowing your rights and hiring a personal injury attorney who fully understands the process of a negligence claim will help you along the way. You are eligible for compensation and should take action immediately.