Is Personal Injury the Same as Negligence?
The civil courts in Utah and elsewhere serve as a means of redress for those injured by others. When the injury is actual physical harm—or harm to one’s “person”—it’s a personal injury. A personal injury claim is a legal process to compel an individual or business to pay compensation to someone who suffered harm due to the person or business’s lack of reasonable care—or negligence.
A personal injury isn’t the same thing as negligence, but proving negligence is central to a successful personal injury claim for damages.
Contact a Salt Lake City personal injury lawyer today at (385) 404-6398 to schedule a free consultation with a legal expert.
Proving Negligence In a Personal Injury Claim
Personal injury law centers around the premise that we all have a legal and moral responsibility to behave reasonably and take basic precautionary measures to avoid causing harm to others in our orbit. For instance, a driver has a responsibility to follow traffic laws so they do not cause a collision in an intersection. When someone neglects that reasonable responsibility it’s considered an act of negligence. Reckless and wrongful behaviors are also negligent in that they disregard the safety of others.
A successful personal injury claim requires the injury victim to provide compelling evidence of the at-fault party’s negligence to prove them liable for damages like medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Proving this requires showing evidence of the following:
- The at-fault party owed a duty of care to the injury victim, such as a driver’s duty to obey traffic laws or an apartment building owner’s duty to install and maintain smoke detectors
- They breached the duty of care by acting with negligence, recklessness, or intentional wrongdoing
- Their breach of duty directly caused injury to the victim
- The injury victim suffered significant damages from the injury
This standard is the center of most personal injury claims. Only a few types of claims have different standards. For instance, in a medical malpractice claim the injury victim must prove that a doctor/patient relationship existed and that the doctor failed to uphold the standard of care accepted by the medical community.
In a defective product claim, the injury victim doesn’t have to prove negligence. Instead, they must prove that the product was inherently unsafe due to a design error, marketing oversight, or manufacturing mistake — if you believe a product to be defective, you should report it to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.
What Compensation Is Available in a Personal Injury Claim After Proving Negligence Occurred?
Injuries have serious physical and economic consequences for the injury victim and often for their family as well. These consequences are the “damages” in a personal injury claim. Once a personal injury attorney investigates all aspects of the circumstances that caused the injury and provides compelling evidence of liability, an injury victim may recover compensation for common economic and non-economic damages such as the following:
- Past and future medical expenses caused by the injury
- Past and future income loss
- Diminished earning capacity if the injury caused a disability
- Compensation for pain and suffering
- Compensation for any other non-economic damages that apply in individual cases such as the loss of vision or hearing, traumatic limb loss, disfigurement/scarring, loss of an organ, or diminished quality of life/loss of enjoyment of life
If a loved one suffered a catastrophic personal injury caused by another’s actions and dies from the injury, close family members may file a wrongful death claim to recover compensation like funeral expenses and the decedent’s lost income for the years they would have had remaining to them — an expert wrongful death lawyer in Salt Lake City will be able to guide you through the entire legal process if you have lost a loved one due to negligence.
How Can a Personal Injury Lawyer Help?
If you’ve suffered an injury and aren’t certain if you can file a claim to recover compensation for your financial losses and pain, reach out to Handy & Handy at (385) 404-6398 or contact us online for a free consultation.
We have deep compassion for injury victims and understand the distress of a challenging undertaking while you’re vulnerable. Trust our team to handle the legal aspects of your injury while you focus on the physical impacts to maximize your recovery.