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Definition of Negligence and Other Basic Rules of Liability...
Understanding the definition of negligence is essential to your
personal injury claim since establishing negligence relates directly to
establishing liability.
Definition of
"Negligence": conduct that falls short of what a
reasonable person would do to
protect another person from foreseeable risks of harm.
Negligence is the second of three factors you need to identify when
making your
claim:
First,
you need to show causation,
as we discussed earlier. Causation
might be the broken tile that caused you to trip and fall.
Second,
you need to show that negligence was at play. If negligence didn't lead
to the tile being loose, then you can't pursue a personal injury
case.
Third,
you need to establish verifiable damages.
There is a
class of cases that involve what is legally defined as negligence.
Defective product and malpractice, as well as assault and battery
cases,
are in categories of their own.
Most accidents involve a person
who's considered legally to be at fault. This determination must be
made before you send a notice of intent to file a claim.
Some cases
may
have more than one negligent party. If this occurs in your
case, it's
important to identify the different parties.
Being involved in
a multiple cars collision may help you in the long run. If one
driver's insurance coverage isn't enough to cover your damages, the
other drivers' coverage can make up the difference in your claim.
Remember, when negligence lies with several parties, all liable parties
can be made to pay at least a percentage of your personal injury
settlement.
However, YOU
may have also shown negligence in the
accident.
Consider a broken floor tile that causes someone to trip and fall.
Property
and business owners can be made liable because they were negligent in
the care of their property.
But, if the person who tripped was running recklessly at the time of
the accident, they might also be negligent.
Sidebar:
Slip and fall cases are often difficult to win because of these types
of arguments. The defense can be quite effective at convincing the
juries that the plaintiff "should have been more careful."
Personal responsibility is a common theme in slip and fall cases.
Of
course this isn’t always relevant. Many activities, like playing sports
in a gym, involve running. So in this case, even though the running
added to the
causation, it might not have been a negligent action (with regards to
the definition of negligence). It was an action within reason.
Injured
persons shown to have partial negligence in an accident will likely
have their damages adjusted by the insurance company.
The insurance
company will define negligence for their client as a percentage,
and apply that percentage to the total injury settlement amount. The
resulting
figure is what they'll offer as compensation.
Some states have
very strict rules on negligence. If the injured person shares fifty
percent or more of the fault, then no third party claim can be made.
A
few states go further, requiring that the injured person must show no
fault at all in order to file a third party claim. The difficulty is
that it’s hard to agree on what officially qualifies as negligence.
This is often gray area where personal injury negotiations get
bogged-down.
Later
in this section we'll look at rules of liability that apply
to animals
and children. The law goes to great lengths to single these two groups
out, because, according to the definition of negligence, neither can be
considered legally responsible for their own
actions.
Return from Definition of Negligence to Lawsuit Settlements
Return from Definition of Negligence to the Personal Injury Settlement Guide
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