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Negligence - and other Basic Rules of Liability...
Negligence is usually the key to establishing liability in a personal injury case. It's 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 couldn't pursue a personal injury case.
Thirdly, you need to establish 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 multi-car auto collision may help you in the long run. If one driver's insurance coverage isn't enough to cover your damages, the other driver's coverage can make up the difference in your claim. Remember, when negligence lies with several parties, all liable parties can be made to pay.
However, you may have also shown negligence in the accident.
Consider the broken floor tile that caused 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.
Of course this isn’t always relevant. Many activities, like playing sports in a gym, involve running. So even though the running added to the causation, it wasn’t a negligent action. 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 determine a percentage of negligence for their client. That percentage is then applied to the total damages. 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 qualifies as negligence.
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 neither can be considered legally negligent for their own actions.
Still have questions about negligence? Click Here.
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