Terms You Should Be Familiar With In Personal Injury Cases
by Lawrence Miller
If you are pursuing a personal injury claim, you should familiarize yourself with basic legal terms used in personal injury cases. Learning the meaning and implications of these terms will make it easier for you to follow your case in court and understand your personal injury lawyer's arguments. Familiarize yourself with these terms when filing a personal injury suit.
Tort
The term tort will come up in court and settlement proceedings in personal injury cases. Many actions in personal injury suits are classified as torts. A tort is a wrongful act that is neither a crime nor doesn't involve a contract. Common examples of torts include slander, libel, wrongful death, trespass, and negligence.
Intentional torts refer to any wrongful acts that defendants commit on purpose. Many of these torts are classified as crimes. For example, battery can result in civil and criminal liability.
Prayer for Relief
When you file a personal injury claim, you want compensation. In this case, you will issue the court a prayer for relief. You are seeking payment for your loss or injury.
Damages include financial costs of lost wages, medical bills, or the cost of a defective item. Damages are classified as compensatory, punitive, nominal, or injunctive. Compensatory damages are for financial losses. On the other hand, punitive damages are meant for punishing the defendant for deterring others from performing similar torts.
Nominal damages arise when the plaintiff didn't suffer any real form of damage. However, the court will award these damages to show that the defendant behaved wrongly. Finally, injunctive damages are a form of relief asking the court to issue an injunction to prevent the defendant from performing the same actions in the future.
Strict Liability
Strict liability laws impose responsibility for injuries to an individual who was found strictly liable though they didn't act with negligence. This law applies in three situations: manufacturing defects, animal bites, and dangerous activities.
Strict liability involving products is where a plaintiff needs to show that the product was defective, the defect was the main cause of the plaintiff's injury, and the product was unreasonably dangerous.
Strict liability where animal bites are involved is based on the concept that animals have no conscience. Therefore, those who have pets are liable for restraining them to avoid harming the general public.
Finally, strict liability can involve someone who creates a dangerous condition. Liability arises when something goes wrong, resulting in another person's injury. Activities that are inherently dangerous are those involving a high potential for harm and cannot be limited by exercising reasonable care. For example, it isn't usual to store flammable liquids or explosives in an apartment.
For more information, contact a personal injury lawyer near you.
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What kind of injuries can you hold someone liable for? How severe do the injuries have to be? When my husband was injured by a faulty saw, we weren't sure what we were going to do. At that time, we didn't have any health insurance and had to try to come up with the money for emergency and long-term medial treatment. This created an impossible time for my family. My husband was out of work and we had medical bills piling up because a product that we paid a lot of money for malfunctioned and injured my husband. So, what can you do when this happens? Read through my blog.