If the person that was injured in an accident can prove that another individual’s careless and neglectful behavior caused that same incident, then that injured victim has the right to file a personal injury claim. Someone that has failed to present such proof lacks the ability to file such a claim.

How negligence relates to personal injury law

Negligence is the legal term that refers to performance of careless and neglectful actions. Until an accident victim can produce evidence of negligence, the victim’s hopes for filing a personal injury claim have almost no chance for being realized. A claimant needs to be able to produce support for any allegation that some other person deserves to be named as the at-fault party.

Elements required for proof of negligence

The ability to show that the at-fault party had a duty of care: The duty of care is the obligation to avoid harming some other person. The legal system must determine the identity of the person that should have been kept from harm. In addition, the legal system determines how broad that duty might have been at the time of the accidental occurrence.

Breach of duty by the at-fault party: Someone has breached his or her duty of care if that same individual has allowed a dangerous situation to materialize. Someone that supervises others has the duty to oversee their performance of the tasks that should prevent development of a dangerous situation.

The personal injury lawyer in Schaumburg stresses on the evidence that the identified breach of duty caused the accidental occurrence, and also caused the claimant’s injury. Someone that had been shaken by involvement in an accident, but had remained unharmed would not be able to produce proof of negligence.

Evidence that the injury caused by the other party’s breach of duty had forced the victim/claimant to deal with measurable damages. The legal system uses the accident-related expenses as the primary means for measuring the extent of damages. Those expenses could have arisen from medical costs, repair or replacement costs, or the value linked to a claimant’s pain and suffering.

Each person has a duty to his or her own person.

That fact points to the reason that the legal system accepts the concept of shared fault. Sometimes 2 people are careless and neglectful within the same time period. When that is the case, those charged with determining fault need to answer this question: Which of the 2 individuals was more careless and neglectful?

The answer to that question should reveal whom to blame, in other words, who demonstrated the greatest level of negligence. In that situation, both of the negligent individuals pay some type of price for their actions. That could mean paying money, or losing part of potential compensation.