If you’ve been injured in an accident caused by someone else, you have the right to recover your losses and damages from that person. But if you’re going to do that, a key thing you must do is prove their fault. A personal injury attorney in Salt Lake City can help you do so effectively.
How Is Fault Determined in Personal Injury Cases?
Fault is determined in personal injury cases by proving four key elements:
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Duty of care
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Violation of the duty of care
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Causation
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Damages
Duty of Care
Duty of care is a legal term referring to the duty everyone has towards other people in any given situation. What the duty of care is precisely will depend upon the specific situation. In a car accident, all drivers have a duty of care towards other road users. The duty of care requires them to drive carefully, obey the traffic laws, and never drive impaired or distracted.
The owner of a store has a duty of care to everyone who visits it to keep it safe for visitors. This means the owner must fix all known hazards or clearly warn visitors of those hazards. A doctor has a duty of care to patients that requires him or her to act as a reasonable and competent doctor would under those circumstances. A pet owner has a duty of care towards everyone in the community to keep their pet under control so no one will be bitten.
Sometimes, duty of care can be difficult to prove. In a car accident, it’s simple to prove that all the drivers had a duty of care because it is assumed to apply to everyone who gets behind the wheel. But in a slip-and-fall, for example, you would need to show who was actually responsible. It might be a store manager, but it might also be a property owner. If you’re trying to prove duty of care in a medical malpractice lawsuit, you have to identify who had the duty of care. It might be a doctor who treated you, but it might be a nurse, a healthcare facility, or even the manufacturer of a certain medical device or treatment.
Violation of the Duty of Care
Once you have established that someone had a duty of care towards you, your next step is to prove that they violated this duty. It will require evidence to do so. Talk to your lawyer about the specific evidence that is needed for your case, but in most situations you’ll want photographic evidence, videos if available, witness testimony, and possibly records of some kind. The records you need will depend on the accident.
For example, if you’re injured in a truck accident where the driver caused the accident, then in addition to all the standard information similar to what you would get after any car accident, you also need information about the trucking company, its hiring practices, the driver’s log, etc. These may show that the trucking company did not properly vet their drivers or that the driver was not following federal transportation laws about taking regular breaks. If you are injured in a slip and fall accident in a store, your lawyer may subpoena records if there’s a possibility they may show that a hazard had been reported to the store but the hazard had been ignored.
Sometimes proving a violation can be very tricky. In slip-and-fall case cases, for instance, you have to be able to show that the property owner was either aware of the hazard or should’ve been aware. In a medical malpractice case, you’ll need expert witness testimony from other medical professionals who are willing to testify that the care you received was not what a competent doctor in the same situation would’ve provided.
Causation
The next thing that you must prove is that the breach of the duty of care actually caused the accident in which you were injured. Just because someone violated their duty of care does not automatically mean that they are liable for your injuries. This causation step is critical to prove. There are two types of causation: actual cause and proximate cause.
Actual
Actual cause argues that something the other party did or did not do directly caused the accident. In other words, “but for” the other party’s action or inaction, the accident would never have taken place at all. Sometimes this is very simple. If someone slams into your car because they ran a red light, it’s pretty easy to show that this was the actual cause of the accident.
But sometimes it’s less obvious. Say that someone ran a red light and hit your car, but the reason they did so was because they were speeding to the nearest hospital emergency room because they had a serious case of food poisoning given to them by some undercooked food served at a restaurant. In this case, the food poisoning and the restaurant’s negligence could be considered an actual cause of the accident, and you would need to talk to your lawyer about the possibility of bringing a claim against the restaurant, as well.
Proximate
Proximate cause is less straightforward and is usually proven with one of two tests: the substantial factor test or the foreseeability test. The first asks whether someone’s action or inaction was a substantial factor in your injury. It doesn’t have to be the only factor, and it doesn’t even have to be the predominant one, but it can’t just be trivial. It must have made a big contribution to your injury. For example, if one person runs a red light and hits another car, and that second car slams into yours, if the driver of the second car was speeding at the time they were hit, this could possibly be a proximate cause of your injuries. But it also might not be. It all depends on the specifics of the situation.
The foreseeability test asks whether the result, your accident, was a foreseeable consequence to something that someone did or failed to do. Foreseeability is often a factor in medical malpractice, premises liability claims, or animal bites. For example, if a dog bites someone and had never shown any aggression prior, this might not be foreseeable. But even if a dog never bit anyone before, if it had frequently menaced and growled at people, then the bite was foreseeable, and the owner should’ve taken steps to keep the dog under control.
Damages
The final thing to prove is the actual damages that you have sustained in the accident. You must be able to clearly link these damages to the accident which is, in turn, clearly linked to the failure in duty of care by someone who owed you such a duty.
Contact Our Experienced Personal Injury Lawyers Today
Whatever your situation, reach out to the experienced attorneys at RamRock Injury Law today for a free case evaluation. We proudly serve clients across Utah. Visit us at our Salt Lake City office:
RamRock Injury Law – Salt Lake City Office
5353 South 960 East Suite 200
Salt Lake City, Utah 84117
Phone: (866) 427-5167
