Proving Who is at Fault in Personal Injury Cases
Posted Monday, March 21, 2016 by Chris Thayer
If you have been injured due to someone else’s negligence, you should hire an experienced Seattle personal injury lawyer at your earliest convenience.
Although it may seem to you like another party is clearly responsible for your injuries, establishing legal responsibility or liability in personal injury cases can be complicated. To determine might receive compensation for your injuries, it must first be determined who is legally responsible.
Determining Legal Liability
The vast majority of accidents happen because at least one person was careless in some way. For personal injury cases, the basic rule is that if one person was more careless than another during an accident, the more careless one must pay at least a portion of the damages that were suffered by the more careful one.
Extenuating factors that may affect how liability is determined include:
- If the injured person was careless too, their compensation could be reduced by the degree to which their carelessness contributed to the accident. This is referred to as comparative negligence.
- If the injured person was somewhere that they weren’t supposed to be, or if they were where they should have expected activities to be occurring that could have caused such an accident, the person who caused the accident may not be held liable because they had no “duty” to be careful. This is also known as the duty of care standard.
- If the accident occurred because the property where it happened was dangerous due to poor maintenance or because it was poorly built, the owner of the property will be deemed liable for failing to properly maintain the premises.
- If the negligent party caused the accident while working for someone else, their employer may also be legally responsible for the incident.
- If the accident was caused by a defective product, the seller and manufacturer of the product may both be held responsible even if the injured party is uncertain which one was careless in designing or permitting the defect, or if they are unclear about how the defect happened in the first place.
When More Than One Person is at Fault
If multiple people are responsible for your injuries, the law in the majority of states dictates that any one of the responsible parties is required to fully compensate you for your injuries. After one party has compensated you, the others may then decide among themselves whether to reimburse that party for their own contributions to the incident.
Collecting from one party is advantageous in that if one party isn’t insured, you can seek compensation from one who is.
As your Seattle personal injury lawyer will tell you, the best course of action is to notify each responsible party that you may be filing for damages. Depending on how the accident occurred and which insurance company takes responsibility, you can then pursue a claim against one of the parties.
How Your Carelessness May Affect Your Claim
In most states, even if your carelessness played a part in the accident, you can still get at least some compensation from anyone else who was at least partly responsible. The amount of other parties’ liability is determined by comparing your recklessness with theirs.The percentage of compensation for your damages will equal the percentage of the liability of the other parties. This is referred to as comparative negligence. For instance, if your damages total $2,000 but it is determined that you are 10-percent responsible, the other party will be liable for $1,800 of the damages.
State Restrictions on Compensation if You are Deemed Careless
Different states apply the comparative negligence standard differently. The most lenient states rule that regardless of how great your own fault was, you can recover compensation for your injuries in the amount based on others’ fault. However, most states won’t allow you to recover any damages if you are deemed to be more than 50 percent or more responsible. A very small number of states won’t allow any compensation at all if you are more than even slightly responsible or if your carelessness directly contributed to the accident. e fully compensated for your injuries.
Hire Seattle Injury Lawyers
If you were injured because of someone else’s carelessness, it is crucial to protect your rights as early as possible. Seattle personal injury lawyer Chris Thayer can help. Call (866) 884-2417 today.