PERSONAL INJURY

Subject matter areas of personal injury

Personal Injury is the name given to the branch of tort law that covers any wrong or damage done to another in his person, property, rights, or reputation. You are entitled to compensatory damages including your medical bills, property damage, and loss wages. Further, you may be entitled to special damages for pain and suffering, emotional distress, and punitive damages. A personal injury can happen at work, in a traffic accident, because of a faulty product or a faulty repair, because of a mistake during medical treatment, or because you slipped and fell on a wet floor or pavement. The personal injury can be physical or psychological but, to be considered actionable, it must occur due to the negligence or unreasonably unsafe actions of your employer, a manufacturer, your doctor, your landlord, or some other person or organization who owes you a duty of ordinary care. Examples of personal injury law causes of action include:

AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS

Automobile accidents cause thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries every year and carry the potential for both criminal and civil liability. They fall into several categories, including head-on collisions, side collisions, rear-end collisions, rollovers, single-car accidents, suicides, pile-ups, and level crossing accidents.

TRUCKING ACCIDENTS

Trucking accidents account for a high percentage of fatal vehicle accidents. Common causes of a trucking accident include driver fatigue, jackknifing, rollovers, inexperience, and overloaded or improperly load trucks. For a truck accident attorney, proving liability in trucking accidents is more complex than in a car crash and very likely will require experts to help reconstruct the accident scene and establish liability in conjunction with the truck accident lawyer claims.

WRONGFUL DEATH

Wrongful death lawsuits are actions, generally based on a state statute, that allow the close relatives of a person who was injured and died as a result of a wrongful act to recover for lost financial and emotional support. The wrongful act may be negligent, such as careless driving; reckless; or deliberate, such as an intentional murder. And the prosecution of the alleged wrongdoer under a criminal statute wrongful death law does not preclude a private, wrongful death suit.

NURSING HOME ABUSE

Nursing home abuse occurs when the resident is physically abused, raped or sexually assaulted, over-sedated, or subjected to verbal and/or emotional abuse in nursing homes. Dependent individuals, often elderly adults, may reside in nursing homes and depend upon the nursing home staff for their care and well-being. Abuse in nursing homes can be hard to detect, since many nursing home residents have trouble communicating and may have sporadic family support. Nursing home abuse cases require a nursing home abuse lawyer to prove the resident was subject to abuse.

HEAD AND SPINAL INJURIES

A Head injury and or a spinal cord injury often result from automobile accidents, falls, sports accidents, and violent acts. Traumatic brain injury is a growing field and can be very difficult to diagnose.

SLIPS AND FALLS

Slip and fall injury accidents are a type of “fall down” accident that occurs when the interface of the victim’s shoe and the floor fails. In a slip and fall injury lawsuit, both the property owner and the slip and fall victim can be held to varying degrees of responsibility or “comparative fault” based on the owner’s duty to keep the property safe and the victim’s duty to exercise ordinary care while walking on potentially slippery surfaces.

DOG BITES

Dogs bite statistics estimate about 4.7 million people in the U.S. every year are bitten by dogs. About 800,000 require medical attention. About a dozen of those injuries are fatal. The potential for liability exceeds $1 billion every year. As a dog owner, you should know your state law as well as city or county ordinances. Common-law states require the dog bite lawsuit victim to prove that the dog owner knew the dog was dangerous but did not take precautions. The dog owner is not held liable if the victim was trespassing or provoking the dog.

CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS

The class action rule, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 23, and comparable state rules allow a large group of people with similar legal claims to join together in one civil lawsuit. To pursue a legal claim as a class, the prospective class members must satisfy the requirements for class certification, including numerosity, common questions of law or fact, typicality of the class representatives, and the likelihood of fair and adequate representation. The class action rule has allowed large classes of consumers to hold the manufacturers of defective or dangerous products liable for injuries caused by the products and to receive compensation.