What is personal injury?

Personal injury is any injury sustained on the body or mind of an individual in an incident caused by the unreasonable action or inaction of another party. Say for instance, a construction worker is not made aware of the toxicity of the substances they would be handling. The employers and management should be concerned of the safety of the workers and are therefore obliged to inform them of the hazards. If this is not done and a worker unknowingly gets harmed by exposure to the substances, the management can be sued for personal injury.

Consult a personal injury lawyer

If you believe you have been involved in a personal injury case, then it is crucial you find and speak with a personal injury lawyer quickly. If you live around The Bronx, NY 10453, then we are just a phone call away. An expert personal injury lawyer from our law firm will help assess your case if it passes as personal injury, and would give you legal representation in court.

The four elements to prove in a personal injury case

Your attorney’s job is to prove your case before the court and win you compensation for your injuries. The four elements he must prove before the court are explained below.

• Duty of care

As have been earlier discussed, there is personal injury when your injury is the result of someone’s unreasonable action. For someone to have acted unreasonably, it means there was some other behavior they were expected to exhibit at that point in time. This behavior is given by their duty of care towards you at that very time to not put you in danger; but this duty is not spelled out in the constitution.

Sometimes it is easy to prove that a driver had not looked at their rear before reversing and so had accidentally run into you, or a physician had neglected to warn you of the side effects of a drug. Sometimes it is more difficult to pinpoint what a person’s duty of care to you is since it is not spelled out in the constitution. Say, a driver over speeds in a road on which there presently are other cars. This naturally means that the driver is neglecting their duty of care to the other users. But driving unreasonably slow can also put someone else in danger. The question is, what speed was safe at that point in time? How were they expected to act in that very situation?

• Breach of duty

Your personal injury lawyer must also prove that your injurer had neglected (breached) their duty of care to you. To understand this, it must first be understood their duty of care towards you at that time. If a shop owner precariously places a heavy object overhead and this falls upon you accidentally, your injury can be said to have been caused by the shop owner’s breach of duty. This is because under normal circumstances, it is expected that the shop owner should have placed such a heavy object at a lower more balanced level to prevent it from falling upon a customer.

• Causation

A breach of a duty of care may not be charged if that breach does not lead to anybody’s harm. There may have been an accident on the road from which you suffer injuries. It is possible that the driver perhaps have been drunk or over sped at a point. But if the accident cannot be linked to them as a fault, the personal injury claim may not stand. Also, the injured party may be partly to blame for their injuries in which case the compensation awarded would be less than the expected amount had they been devoid of fault.

• Injury

Damages (monetary compensation) awarded are to make up for pains, suffering and financial liabilities caused by the injury. If there is no injury or actual loss resulting from the incident, then it is not possible that damages would be paid. Therefore, your lawyer must make it evident before the court the pains and losses you have suffered and are suffering.

Justice is for everyone. You may not be able to recover a lost limb or bring back a dead loved one, but obtaining justice against someone else’s wrongdoing has a long way to go in healing you psychologically. Let us help you get the relief you seek. Call us to speak with a personal injury lawyer near you 10453.