There are Three Required Ingredients That Make up a Successful Personal Injury Case

When it comes to successfully litigating personal injury cases the elements that must exist in order to win damage compensation are very clear. The first aspect is a liability, either through negligence or another violation of legal duty. Second are damages to the victim or the victim’s estate if there is a wrongful death. And finally, you must have a solvent defendant who can be made to pay the damages owed to you.

A more detailed explanation of these elements would include:

Liability: Once a defendant has violated their legal responsibility (or “duty”) to another person and caused that person some sort of tangible harm, it is grounds for some liability, either a percentage of responsibility along with other defendants or complete liability if that person or entity is the only responsible defendant. In the eyes of the law, they are responsible for any damages incurred by the plaintiff in proportion to their involvement in the harm suffered by that injured plaintiff (or surviving family members in case of wrongful death). The main situation in which a defendant breaches their legal duty towards a plaintiff is through negligence, which is primarily considered irresponsible or brash actions, that have caused an “accident.” And negligence can assume many shapes and forms.

It’s easiest to think of negligence as the means to the end, or to the method through which the violation of the legal duty occurred. And there are degrees of that negligence. The most common form of negligence is simply not paying attention. And there are many ways that can happen; most of them having to do with carelessness or inattention by the defendant to what is going on.

But when “gross negligence” breaches the defendant’s legal duty, then it is not a careless accident but is legally referred to as “willful intent.” A defendant who caused the injury through gross negligence has behaved in a way he or she was aware could likely result in some kind of harm, such as drinking and driving. But he or she just didn’t care. On a different note, “intentional or deliberate torts” (a tort is a legal term for the violation of a legal duty) are constituted by intentionally inflicting trauma on another human being, including assault or other criminal acts against other people. This brief explanation should illustrate to you how negligence is often the most common form of violations against others’ legal rights to not be harmed. However, it doesn’t alter the fact that the victim/plaintiff must prove negligence or some other form of defendant disregard of their legal duty to not harm them and that was the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries for which the defendant is liable.

Damages: This is a legal term that sums up all monetary losses that the plaintiff has a right to claim in his or her personal injury lawsuit because of the defendant’s negligence. Damages do not exclusively refer to the specific injuries to the victim. It encompasses all of the harm done to the plaintiff from a financial perspective: the entire value of their case, as opposed to just the value of the plaintiff’s physical injuries. In an instance where the victim broke a leg or suffered burns, the fracture or the burns are the injuries. The legal damages would be any monetary costs and, or, losses that result from the injury. Damages will either fall into the category of either General or Special.

General damages are of those which are viewed as non-economic. This makes them much more subjective and necessitates that they are handled and presented very carefully to a jury in order for you to have the best chances of winning your civil trial. They must be realistic and not excessive as the amount for damages can be argued in court and adjusted if they are deemed to be greater than normal. And having to backtrack on the number of damages you are asking might have a negative effect on your case. Some common examples of General Damages include:

Pain and suffering.
Disfigurement.
Loss of consortium (or partnership), this can be classified as either a professional or marital partnership, and if a family member is also involved in business, it can include both.
Emotional distress.
Physical disability (either short-term, long-term or permanent).
Because of the subjectivity of these damages, a clear and effective justification of your general damage suffering, and the degree that you sustained them, is a vital aspect of filing (and winning) a personal injury claim. General damages and the amount awarded for them differ with every case, even if the injuries may appear to be alike.

To better understand the subjectivity of general damages, imagine that two victims are in a blowout accident caused by defective tires where the vehicle rolled over and exploded. Both were badly burned. But one plaintiff was unconscious during the explosion. And though he suffered horrible burns, in his unconscious state he was not alert to experience the pain as it happened. But the other plaintiff was just as badly burned and was fully alert enough to experience the full and terrible agony at the time of being burned. So even though both of these victims may end up with similar injuries and medical expenses, each experienced a different level of pain and suffering. So it is quite likely that the monetary damages each victim is entitled-to would be different.

Hopefully, you better understand why every accident will be different from the next and you should get a personal injury lawyer to help you correctly establish the reasonable and proper amount of damages to demand, based on the details of your suffering in addition to the injuries themselves.

Special damages involve the actual economic cost of your accident, which makes them much more objective because the amounts are generally easy to assess. However, this may not always be the case. In the event that the resulting injuries are disastrous to the victim’s state of well-being, the plaintiff’s attorney might not be capable of determining how much longer their client will live. Or your treating physicians might not yet know how long it will take before you are completely recovered. These are two examples of the difficulty in determining, with any accuracy, the value of lost future income. Just using previous salary earnings is not always a good indicator either. What might the injured plaintiff expect to earn through future promotions or leaving that job to take a better one? Great care must be given to the more technical nature of the victim’s earning potential, like changes in the job description, pursuing higher education levels or more specialized certification. All of these variables and others could inevitably lead to a higher pay scale throughout the years of the plaintiff’s long-term disability.

Some examples of general damages are listed below.

Wages or earning capacity lost.
Court costs.
Medical costs, incurred in the past and future, including physical, psychological and occupational therapy.
Damages to the victim’s property.
Since winning compensation from the defendant is proportionate to special damages, it is very crucial to the plaintiff’s recovery for these damages are handled with extreme care because they will most often take the form of monetary expenses previously paid or owed by the plaintiff, or maybe even the defendant if the injury is work-related or the plaintiff has some form of liability insurance to defray these costs; in which case, once the plaintiff wins damages, some of those monies might be owed the insurance carrier who paid those initial medical bills.

All of the damages that the plaintiff claims to have suffered must be accounted for, to the penny. Your local personal injury lawyers at our Texas Law Firm spend a lot of time on each case to create a demand packet. This is an itemized accounting of all the plaintiff’s damages, generally submitted first to the defendant’s insurance company (assuming he has one) along with a request for a specified amount of compensation.

Solvent Defendant: Now that you understand the first two items necessary to execute a successful injury lawsuit, we now deal with what is probably the most important element of success in a personal injury lawsuit. You must have a financially solvent defendant. This means they have the means to reimburse you. Consider the drivers who accidentally crash their cars while swerving to avoid hitting a homeless person who was jaywalking. There is certainly provable liability and damages to the vehicle. But there is no way to pursue compensation since the homeless person who actually caused the accident has no financial worth with which to pay damages to the injured accident victim. It is unfortunate that some cases involving defendants without monetary resources will leave victims hurt and their property damaged; with no way to seek compensation for the damages they have suffered.

Identifying solvent defendants is a critical area where an experienced attorney can greatly assist you in getting the financial justice you deserve. While many individuals will attempt to evade any financial liability through lack of monetary means, in most cases, they are simply obscuring their worth by trying to hide the money in separate, maybe even offshore, bank accounts, or giving all of their money to their spouse in order to appear worthless: hoping to avoid being sued or falsifying their lack of insurance. We see many insurance falsifiers because some defendants fear their insurance carrier will drop them if they have to pay one more claim.

Regardless of what these defendants might attempt to do to prevent you from finding out the truth, our experienced legal team is quite experienced in identifying all possible monies that defendants may be hiding from you. A financial asset check is the most common way to discover the actual amounts of money they have that defendant try to hide. With few exceptions, the next step is a very stringent asset check once we have lined up all liable parties to your personal injury. Luckily for our clients, many of these asset investigations turn up money that the defendant hoped we would never find.

Put our years of experience to work for you if you want to know your rights, how to proceed with your claim and how much compensation you can secure from your personal injury case. Regardless of how it happened or who is liable, we can answer all of your questions. Call our Law Firm now at 1(800) 862-1260 (toll-free) for a free consultation and find out how we can help you.