3 Commonly Asked Questions About Personal Injury Cases
Personal injury cases are not the most cut and dry court cases in the world, and they often leave many plaintiffs confused. Read on and discover the answers to a few commonly asked questions about personal injury cases and how they relate to you.
Can You Receive Compensation If The Accident In Question Exacerbated An Already Existing Condition?
In a word: yes. For example, a person has a broken elbow. He or she falls at a business due to the business not icing the outside pathways during snowy conditions. The fall caused the person's condition to worsen and the break to become compound. The person has a right to compensation for this, even though his or her elbow was already broken. The fact of the matter is, if someone put you in unnecessary harm, and you were injured, or an already existing condition or injury was exacerbated, you have a legal right to claim damages from them.
What Exactly Is Negligence And How Does It Relate To Personal Injury Cases?
Negligence is often a key component of personal injury cases. Negligence is, essentially, any action (or lack of action, unaware behavior, etc.) that engendered the conditions for your injury to occur. Often times, the definition of negligence is treated in a courtroom as any behavior that an otherwise cognizant or rational person would deem as unreasonable. For example, if you were to play a game where, while driving, someone in the backseat would randomly place their hands over your eyes, you both can be deemed culpable due to negligent behavior, and both parties would most likely pay some form of damages.
If An Injury Was Partly Your Fault, Can You Still Be Entitled To Damages?
Most states utilize a criteria called comparative negligence in these cases. Basically, the court will place a quantitative percentage on whom they deem responsible. For example, if a person was driving recklessly, but you ran out from behind a car to cross the street while you were not at an intersection, the court may deem the driver of the vehicle 75% responsible for the accident, while you were 25% responsible. This means that the driver of the vehicle, or his or her insurance provider, must contribute 75% of the damages to which you are entitled, while you are responsible for the other 25%. A small number of states use a rubric called contributory negligence, wherein if you were responsible for the accident in any small way, you will not be entitled to damages.
Talk to a personal injury attorney today for more information.
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