Personal
injury compensation is devised to reimburse people who are injured in
an accident or other circumstances. However, every person who has been
harmed cannot automatically claim compensation.
The
principal rationale is that the accident or injury should be directly
attributable to someone else. That is, there is another person who is at
fault and the accident, fall or other damage happened due to his or her
wrongful act or negligence. This is of grave importance and any Los Angeles car accident lawyer will first consider the matter of negligence in any personal injury claim.
What is negligence?
As
per the law, every person is required to behave with a reasonable level
of care under any circumstances. Any failure or deviation is termed as
negligence and paints them as ‘at-fault’ for a resultant accident or
mishap. This is not limited to road and vehicular accidents alone; the
mishap can be in the form of construction site accidents, slip and fall,
nursing home neglect, dog bite, medical malpractice and so on.
However,
the contention for getting full personal injury compensation is that
the other person should be entirely at fault for the accident. Otherwise
the case enters a different realm of comparative or even contributory
negligence.
Contributory negligence –
This comes into play when the victim’s own actions or behavior was
negligent towards their own safety. For instance, if a person crosses a
street without checking the streetlight, drives on the wrong side of the
road or even omits to wear a seatbelt or helmet, they contribute to the
accident as well. In fact, if the plaintiff is deemed to be even 1% at
fault, they are denied the claim and do not get anything as compensation
at all. This kind of pure contributory negligence is in place only in a
few states which does not include California.
Comparative negligence – Most
of the states including California follow the rule of comparative
negligence. This works on the premise that if a victim is partially
responsible for an accident, the compensation will be proportionately
reduced based on the percentage of their own fault. The negligence of
each party is taken into consideration and in some states it is
imperative that the victim’s fault should be less than 50%. Thus, if the
victim is primarily responsible for the accident, they cannot get any
compensation at all.
The
judge or jury will determine the percentage of negligence in a personal
injury lawsuit based on the facts presented by both the attorneys.
Therefore, it is essential to engage an experienced Los Angeles car accident lawyer
who can skillfully prove the defendant’s negligence, as even a
difference of a couple of points in the percentage can potentially spell
a loss of thousands of dollars in the compensation!
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