Determining if You Have a
Personal Injury Case

In most states, the first step in determining whether you may be entitled to money for your injuries is to ask, "Whose fault was it?" In an automobile wreck, one of the most common types of personal injury cases, the person who caused the crash is considered "liable" and must compensate the innocent victims for any injuries the accident caused. A driver who runs a stop sign and hits a delivery truck is liable for the truck driver's injuries.

Determining fault is often not that easy. The classic example is the intersection case. The police officer arrives and both drivers insist, "I had the green light!" Or one driver declares, "I did hit her, but that truck knocked my car into hers! She should blame him!"

Assuming you can demonstrate that the other driver was at fault, the next step is to ask yourself, "Did I do anything wrong?" The answer to this important question will bring you different results in different states. In some states, if you did anything wrong that contributed to the accident, you cannot recover anything for your injuries. This is called the doctrine of "contributory negligence." Other states employ the less harsh rule of "comparative negligence." In these states, the amount of your compensation is reduced in proportion to the extent of your own fault. For example, if your carelessness contributed 30 percent to the accident, you can only recover 70 percent of your damages from the other driver.

After determining fault, the second step is calculating damages. "Damages" are the economic, property or health-related losses caused by the accident. If someone hit your new car and broke your arm, your damages might include the cost of repairing your car, the depreciation in the value of the car after it is repaired, the cost of renting another car while yours is in the shop, the medical expenses for treating your arm, gas mileage for trips to the doctor, the value of the physical pain and mental suffering caused by a fractured bone and reimbursement for lost time from work.

Damages are often just as hotly contested as fault. A negligent driver might defend herself by insisting that the plaintiff broke his arm before the accident. To help prove this, she might subpoena past medical records, interview physicians, hire expert witnesses and get a court order for the plaintiff to be examined by an "independent" doctor. Or she might contest the amount of damages. She might insist, for example, that she should not have to pay for the plaintiff's trips to a psychotherapist to overcome his fear of intimacy allegedly caused by the broken arm.

Measuring damages in personal injury cases often proves difficult--generally the biggest disputes arise over "pain and suffering." You can get a sense of the difficulty by asking yourself, "How much money would it take to compensate the innocent victim of a car accident for losing her leg or losing her eye or causing her miscarriage or straining her back?" Our society asks jurors these questions every day.

Copyright © 2006 Personal Injury Attorney Information.