Personal Injury Law – What Needs to Happen

Generally, a negligent action is a carelessness that leads to personal injury to another individual. It can be a behavior, like carelessly knocking a rock off a rooftop, or a failure to act, like a landlord who doesn’t fix a worn-out stair. A negligent action typically provides the grounds for injuries cases.

To file a legal suit for negligence, the injury victim (the individual filing the legal action) has to prove four points: That the negligent party (the person or entity being sued) owed the plaintiff a duty of due care; that the defendant failed to use due care towards the injured party (i.e. breached the duty); that the defendant’s breach of duty caused the plaintiff’s harm; and that the injured party suffered damages as an end result.

Duty of care: The injury victim needs to demonstrate that the accused had a duty of reasonable care toward the injured party. An individual has a duty to avoid causing injury to another if a reasonable individual in the same scenario could foresee that behavior (or failure to act) might lead to harm. Some scenarios are very clear. We all know that somebody could be injured if we run a stoplight, so we have a duty of reasonable care to follow traffic laws and signals. Other cases are more tricky. If a homeowner has a private swimming pool in a fenced yard, does he have a duty to prevent a neighbor child from climbing the fence and accidentally drowning in the pool? How much care would a reasonable man or woman take in that circumstance? In each case, the issues concerning the injury play a significant role in determining whether or not a defendant had a duty of reasonable care towards the injury victim.

Breach of Duty: The plaintiff has to demonstrate that the negligent parties failed to carry out their duty of care. For example, an ordinary individual could foresee that a van full of explosives could ignite, so a person who parks such a vehicle in a populated parking lot has breached the duty of due care to the other people nearby. If the vehicle blows up, the driver may be guilty of negligence. A person may also foresee that a car that isn’t repaired adequately could malfunction, so if the brakes on a poorly maintained car fail and the car hits a young child, the owner of the car might have breached the duty of care to that child. Every car owner has a duty to maintain the car in a safe condition. Alternatively, if the owner regularly maintains and repairs the car and the brakes failed because the brakes were faulty or the mechanic made a mistake, the owner did not breach a duty of reasonable care, though the brake manufacturer or the mechanic might be to blame.

Cause: The injured party needs to demonstrate that the negligent person breach of duty triggered the injury for which the plaintiff is suing. Sometimes causation is clear. If you run a red light and hit a person, you obviously caused the injuries. If the pedestrian’s elderly mother has a heart attack and passes away when she hears of her daughter’s injury, did you result in that injury? Not likely, but those are the kinds of difficulties that have to be solved in a negligence lawsuit. There could also be issues about what injury was caused by an accident. People today typically have more than one accident in their lives, so if a person has had two prior back injuries, precisely what injury to the back was caused by the most recent fall down a flight of stairs?

Damages: Damages in a negligence claim try to put the injury victim in the same situation he or she would be in if the accident hadn’t occurred. A plaintiff has to prove the monetary value of his or her injuries. For example, if somebody is disabled and can no longer work, a calculation of damages would consider the profession of the injury victim and the amount he or she would have earned during the time left in a normal working career. Damages would also include medical expenses and estimated costs for medical care, special accommodations, and assisted living.

In some situations, negligent parties are at fault for negligence because of the operation of law, and not because they specifically caused an accident. As an example, since an employer is held to blame for injuries attributable to employees during work, UPS may be liable if a UPS driver has an accident while making deliveries. A hospital may be held accountable for injury caused by only one nurse. Injured parties often make claims against several defendants to make sure there will be enough assets (money) to pay a judgment.

If you think you have been the victim of negligence, contact us for a free consultation,
Truck Accident Lawyers

As injury lawyers, it is not uncommon for us to review potential wrongful death claims involving truck driver fatigue. We often see this in the context of tractor-trailer accidents where the truck driver has fabricated his driver’s log and/or driven far in excess of his allowable hours. Many times there is demonstrated sleep loss involving the use of amphetamines, methamphetamines or other stimulants used by the driver to overcome the fatigue.

According to a newsletter we recently ran across published by a well respected truck safety organization, there is an interesting correlation between sleep loss, fatigue and the serious impairment caused by being legally drunk. Studies have shown that the impairment from sleep loss and long working hours are almost the same caused by alcohol consumption. The longer one is awake, the slower the reaction time. If one gets too little sleep (4 or less hours) this is equivalent to the effects of .05% blood alcohol for the long working hours. In one study, where people were kept awake for 24 straight hours, the slowed perception reaction time had approximately the same effect as .10% blood alcohol level which is above the level (.08%) now nationally recognized as being legally drunk. Thus, it can be clinically demonstrated that if one loses sleep for a long period of time one’s perception and reaction time is dangerously slowed. More here @ https://www.carabinshaw.com/truck-accident-attorney-in-midland.html

In our personal injury practice we often see the evidence of serious impairment caused by fatigue and lack of sleep. The end result of such fatigue we see in our practice is a serious collision. Increasingly, we see this particularly in the context of truck drivers who are trying to increase their wages by driving longer and longer hours and greater and greater distances. Even though large trucks make up just 4% of all registered vehicles, and 7% of all vehicle miles traveled, the same trucks are involved in 11% of all crash fatalities. This year, as in years past, approximately 5,000 people will be killed in truck crashes and collisions throughout the country. We know from our experience that many of these crashes are preventable and would not occur if drivers kept shorter hours and were not seriously impaired by fatigue. While commercial airline pilots typically fly only about 30 hours a month, most truck drivers drive around 300 hours a month. For some reason, this has become acceptable in the workplace even though the number of people killed in truck crashes annually exceed the number of people that are killed in major airline crashes. Query why this is so?

With improvements in technology, before long, employers and trucking companies will be able to monitor precisely the hours being kept by their truck drivers. We can only hope that legislation will follow which mandates that employers not only monitor the number of hours driven but also the number of hours taken by the driver to rest. Too many hours driving means too much fatigue which also means possible impairment of perception and reaction times. Because we see the end result of this, which is serious injury, death and tragedy for our client’s families, and we can only hope that the speed of technology will continue to develop to the point where trucking companies will have no choice but to monitor and address the significance safety issues caused by driver fatigue. Please click here @ https://truckaccidentattorneysa.com/corpus-christi-truck-accident-lawyers/

Falling Injury Attorneys : Personal Injury Lawyers

Have you been injured in a fall at work? Let our Law Office help.

Every year hundreds of serious injuries are caused by falls on construction sites. Workers are routinely injured in accidents involving scaffolding collapses, working at heights, and building collapses.

Common falling injuries

Injuries resulting from a fall are often life changing. Even a minor fall can result in broken bones, collapsed lungs and severe lacerations. Falls from a significant height can cause spinal cord injury, paralysis, traumatic brain injury, and death.

Falling injury-preventing OSHA regulations and Texas laws

OSHA regulations require that employers provide their employees with fall protection systems when employees are working at a height above six feet. OSHA also requires that employers protect their employees from falling through holes (including skylights) by using hole covers. The three most common types of fall protection equipment used in the construction industry are fall arrest systems, nets, and guardrails.

According to Texas law, Employers are required to provide their employees with a safe working environment. The law requires that an employer designate a competent person to ensure the safety of other employees working at heights greater than six feet.

Our Law Office has the experience and drive you need to resolve your construction site fall case. Our Law Office will aggressively pursue your claim to ensure that the people responsible for your injury are held accountable and that you receive the compensation you deserve. Contact our Law Offices and an experienced construction accidents attorney will provide you with a free consultation. Injury relief is just a phone call away.
Practice Areas: Car Accidents, Trucking Accidents. On the Job Injuries. Wrongful Death. Construction Accidents, Boating Accidents, Premises Liability. Contact Us

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