Personal injury law encompasses injuries to your body, mind and emotions as opposed to damage to property. It falls under tort law.
Personal injury cases often result in financial compensation for victims through settlement or judgement, intended to help restore them back into the financial position they were prior to their injuries.
Damages
Personal injury cases include compensation for damages, or financial losses. Common examples are medical bills, lost wages due to missed workdays and property damage to vehicles or other items. Your level of compensation depends upon how severe and ongoing your injury or illness is – along with its effect.
Special damages (also referred to as economic damages) are losses with an identifiable financial value that are quantifiable and identifiable, typically in terms of medical bills submitted for payment, lost earnings and property damage.
General damages, on the other hand, are less measurable and harder to quantify; they’re often determined based on pain and suffering, emotional distress or loss of enjoyment of life. Punitive damages may also be awarded in certain instances where defendant actions were particularly harmful or malicious, in order to punish the offending party and discourage similar negligent or intentional behavior from happening again in future.
Statute of Limitations
The statute of limitations is a law that sets a deadline for filing lawsuits after injuries. If your claim is submitted after this deadline has passed, your claim may be disapproved in court and dismissed without recourse to litigation.
New York state statute of limitations for personal injury lawsuits typically spans three years. However, this time frame can differ depending on your particular case’s unique circumstances.
The statute of limitations “clock” typically starts ticking when injuries occur or they are discovered, though in cases involving medical malpractice this date could be extended by the discovery rule if your injuries were not immediately obvious; similarly if you were minor or insane at the time of injury. Furthermore, certain circumstances might allow an extension such as imprisonment or being absent from state. Your knowledgeable lawyer will help to establish the rules specific to your claim.
Duty of Care
One owes everyone in his or her vicinity a legal duty of reasonable care when acting in ways that might harm others, particularly when driving a vehicle or providing healthcare services. This responsibility becomes especially apparent when operating machinery such as cars or providing medical treatments.
If the defendant fails to meet this standard, they have violated their duty of care and could be held liable in a personal injury suit. For instance, reckless drivers that cause car accidents that injure plaintiffs can be held accountable and held liable for damages.
Injury claims require injured parties to prove proximate cause, or how a breach of duty caused their injuries directly. Proving this may be straightforward in certain situations – like when someone throws rocks from their balcony onto pedestrians below – while other cases where someone violates safety regulations and causes industrial accidents may prove more challenging.
Causation
Personal injury lawsuits provide individuals the ability to seek recompense for economic losses and emotional trauma caused by an incident, in contrast with criminal trials which aim at punishing defendants.
At the core of any successful personal injury claim lies proof of causation – that is, showing how the defendant’s misconduct caused your injuries. There are two components to this concept – actual cause and proximate cause. Actual cause (commonly referred to as cause-in-fact) can often be proven more easily as it requires showing that your injuries would have not happened “but for” their negligent conduct.
Proving the proximate cause can be more challenging, since it requires showing that your injury was directly attributable to defendant actions; this process is known as legal causation. For a personal injury claimant to succeed and receive any compensation they must be able to demonstrate both of these elements; otherwise they will not receive anything in return.