A personal injury lawyer practices tort law. One kind of “tort” or wrongdoing is negligence. Negligence is a civil (as opposed to criminal) cause of action, a claim against someone brought by an aggrieved party that suffered a physical and emotional injury.

A Personal Injury Lawyer Brings Negligence Claims

Negligence is basically failing to do something one should do, or doing something a reasonable person would not do. Running a stop sign, crashing into another vehicle causing the other driver physical injuries is a common example. The elements of the cause of action that lawyers learn in the first year of law school torts class are:

1. Duty
2. Breach
3. Causation
4. Damages

These elements appear in the jury instructions for courts in each state. Here’s what the jury instructions looked like in 1965.

Negligence lawsuits are filed against an entity or person who failed to be reasonably cautious in their actions. It can involve professional services like medical care, which we call medical malpractice. Negligence can involve providing a product to customers that injuries them in a way that the company could have avoided. An institution like a mosque may have failed to protect a child molested by an Imam in an Islamic sex abuse case.

Many times negligence lawsuits concern professionals, companies, or institutions where injuries occur within their control. Such lawsuits may involve any person or entity whose actions caused or continued to the injury of another depending on the scope of their involvement. To succeed on a negligence claim, one must have admissible evidence showing the conduct caused the harm, it was unreasonable, and could have been avoided if the responsible party had been more careful and followed applicable standards of care.

Examples of Negligence

A personal injury lawyer may be a medical malpractice attorney; more specifically, a nursing home abuse attorney. Motor vehicle collisions such as a trucking accident trigger negligence cases. School, clergy, and group home sex abuse cases do as well.

Someone who handles cases involving products that injure people, product liability attorneys, also bring negligence claims. They may be single-event cases like a defective air fryer recall case or a wrongful death case involving a baby lounger. They could be more complex and invoking thousands of injured people, mass torts.

Product Liability

When companies make and sell products, they have to make sure they are safe, free of defects. If they learn of unsafe conditions, they should redesign them or provide warnings. They should monitor the product to be sure the instructions and warnings are being followed.

KBA’s attorneys have litigated everything from medical devices to table saw, pharmaceuticals to lawn mowers, planes, trains, and automobiles too. Right now KBA is leading the charge regarding BioZorb marker lawsuits, hernia mesh lawsuits, Cartiva toe implants, and Amazon products and products sold by other retailers.

Vehicle Injuries: Trucking Accidents, Motorcycle Accidents, Bicycle Accidents, Car Accidents, Pedestrian Accidents, Electric Scooter Accidents

Everyone operating a vehicle, whether on land or water, is required to show a reasonable amount of care and safety. If they do not, and their actions injure someone, the survivor can sue for negligence. Some trucking accidents result in wrongful death claims, which are negligence claims involving a death that happened because of the underlying negligence or product.

Premises Liability: Slip, Trip and Falls; Negligent Security; Construction Site Accidents

Property owners must exercise reasonable care in maintaining their property. It should be reasonably safe for those who visit or use is. If someone is injured because of action or inaction on the part of the owner, the injured person can also sue for negligence.

Fallen electrical wires, unsafe equipment, premises in disrepair and just a few example of case KBA has handled.

How to Prove Negligence

A personal injury lawyer must prove liability and damages to prove negligence. We all make mistakes. Not all mistakes are actionable. There has to be a deviation from the norm, mistakes we shouldn’t make or if we do, have to be held accountable for. There’s a difference between an accident, acts of God, things that we cannot reasonably prevent and more egregious conduct like ignoring reports of injuries from a product defect.

A crucial element of a negligence lawsuit is the causal connection between the wrongdoing or product and the injury. Two things occurring at the same time may not be causally related (not all correlations are causation).

The four elements a plaintiff must be prove by admissible evidence in a negligence lawsuit include:

Duty

A duty is an obligation, something someone has to do or not do. We might want people or companies to do or not do certain things, but a duty often has to be tethered to something. We all know we’re not supposed to drive through red lights; we have a duty to stop on red.

In trucking accidents it’s the rules of the road or federal regulations governing trucks. Nursing homes are subject to federal regulations. Medical device companies are too. One of the things KBD prides itself on is mastering these standards of care.

Breach

Individuals have a certain standard of care to follow to ensure the safety of others around them. When someone fails to follow the standards of care, they may breach their duty. Acts or omissions can be evidence of a breach of the duty of care.

Cause

Plaintiffs in a negligence lawsuit must also prove that if the defendant individual or entity acted differently, the plaintiffs would not have suffered an injury. But for the conduct or product at issue, there would be no harm. The conduct or product must also be a proximate cause of the harm. Sometimes the conduct is too attenuated, too far removed to be the cause in a legal sense. A case we learn in law school is illustrative.

Here are the facts:

1. A woman, Helen Palsgraf, was standing on a train platform at a Long Island Railroad station.
2. A man carrying a small package rushed to catch a departing train.
3. Two railroad employees attempted to help the man board: one employee pulled him onto the train from inside, while the other pushed him from behind.
4. In the process, he dropped his package, which contained fireworks, unknown to the railroad employees.
5. The package exploded when it hit the ground causing a shockwave.
6. The explosion caused a set of scales at the far end of the platform to fall, striking and injuring Palsgraf.

Had the railroad employees not helped him or did so more carefully, that likely wouldn’t have happened. But for their conduct, Ms. Palsgraf would not have been hurt. The New York Court of Appeals ruled against Palsgraf, finding that the railroad was not liable for her injuries. Here, the harm was not foreseeable. Most reasonable employees would not expect that helping a man with a package would lead to an explosion and an injury far away. This case is used to teach the principle of proximate cause in tort law.

Damages

The fourth element in a negligence lawsuit involves the plaintiff’s injury and the monetary damage sustained as a result of the injuries. If any actual monetary damages were sustained, the defendant will be held liable. Medical bills, property damage, and other direct monetary damages may all be compensated by the defendant if negligence, fault, and damages are proven.

Contact an Experienced Negligence Attorney

Injuries can be devastating, and injurious to a family. When these situations happen because of the carelessness of another person, the person and their family may be entitled to compensation through a negligence lawsuit.

If you or someone you know has been involved in an accident that involved the negligence of another, your next step should be to contact an experienced negligence lawsuit attorney. KBA Attorneys has years of experience dealing with all kinds of negligence lawsuits, and we want to help you secure compensation and justice. Contact us or fill out our online application for a case evaluation, so we can advise you on the next steps you should take.