None of us are immune to injuries or traumas. Accidents such as car crash, medical complications, animal bite or others could happen to everyone. If you decide to protect your legal rights after an accident which has impacted your life, you may have some general questions about such case, which is called “personal injury”.
Personal injury cases happen when one person gets hurt from an accident or injury, and someone else might be responsible for that hurt because of his negligence. Such cases involve situations when responsible person carelessly causes an accident. However, negligence won’t result each time someone gets hurt. That’s why to establish liability the plaintiff must prove that cautious person in the defendant’s position would have acted more careful under the circumstances.
The other type of personal injury cases is intentionally harming another person. Its simplest form is a physical harm like battery or assault. Beating another person or attempting or threatening to do so, is a quite easy harm to prove. Tougher cases include defamation or invasion of privacy. Such cases include an element of intent, that’s why proving the harm and identifying the responsible person as the cause of the harm can be difficult.
Also, there are cases where defendants will be liable even though they did everything possible to avoid accident. This is called strict liability. Defendant will be strictly liable if someone is hurt while the defendant is engaging in a highly dangerous activity like demolition or moving hazardous materials, even if it is legal and all precautions are taken.
Most conflicts concerning personal injury are often resolved through informal early settlement. A settlement usually represents negotiation, followed by a written agreement in which both sides choose resolving their arguing through monetary compensation instead filing a lawsuit.
You must remember, that plaintiff have a limited time to sue, called a “statute of limitations.” According to it, the period of time begins when the plaintiff is injured or discovers the injury. Statutes of limitations can be different from state to state and often vary by type of injury.
