Negligence

The claim of negligence is the basis of many personal injury lawsuits. A personal injury lawyer who thoroughly understands the tenants of negligence law is an asset to any person who has suffered an injury as a result of someone else’s carelessness. To prove a negligence claim, typically three factors must be present.

• There must be a duty of care. This has a wide variety of interpretations, but the basic premise is that, when taking actions that could foreseeably cause harm to others, the person taking those actions has a duty to minimize the potential harm to other people who do not consent to that risk. For example, if you are operating a power tool, you have a duty to ensure that the power tool does not harm other people in the immediate vicinity.
• The duty of care must be breached. It is important to note that this is contingent on the first criteria; if there is no duty, then the duty cannot be breached. A duty of care is breached when a person fails to reasonably reduce the risk to others who have not consent to that risk. If, while using a power tool, you fail to exercise reasonable care and leave the tool running on a table, you more than likely have breached your duty of care.
• The injury must be a direct cause of the breach. Simply being injured is not enough; the defendant’s breach of duty must be what causes your injury. In the example of the power tool, if it was left running on a table, fell off, shattered, and caused an injury to someone else, your breach of duty was the direct cause of his or her injury and you could be held liable for negligence.