Los Angeles Lawyer Representing Accident Victims

Serious injuries can result from car, truck, or motorcycle accidents, dangerous property conditions, or other situations in which someone acts carelessly. After an accident, you may be saddled with substantial medical expenses. In some cases, the injuries are permanent or require you to hire someone else to help with household chores. It is not uncommon for victims to experience significant pain and suffering and to lose enjoyment in their usual activities.

Bringing a Personal Injury Claim for Compensation

In California, most personal injury lawsuits arise out of someone’s negligence, rather any intentional wrongdoing. In order to recover compensation, you generally will have to establish four elements by a preponderance of the evidence.

These are the defendant’s duty of care toward you, the defendant’s breach of duty, actual and proximate (legal) causation, and actual damages. Preponderance of the evidence is a standard of proof that simply means the plaintiff has persuaded the jury that what he or she is required to prove is more likely to be true than not.

In California, Civ. Code § 1714 establishes the general duty of each person to exercise reasonable care for the safety of others when doing any activity. There are many ways a defendant can breach that duty, depending on the context. For example, if someone is texting while driving and runs a stop sign, crashing into another car, a jury is likely to view this as a breach of duty. Similarly, if a store leaves spilled liquids on the floor for hours, and a customer slips and gets hurt, this is likely to be viewed as a breach of duty.

In some cases, the doctrine of negligence per se applies, usually making it easier for a plaintiff to focus on the elements of causation and damages. Under Evidence Code section 669, someone’s failure to use reasonable care is presumed when he or she violates a public entity’s regulation, an ordinance, or a statute, the violation is the legal cause of death or injury to someone else, the death or injury arises out of an event that is the type that the regulation, ordinance, or statute was designed to prevent, and the victim who was hurt or killed was the type of person for whose protection the law was adopted.

Damages that are available in personal injury cases may range from medical bills, lost wages and earning capacity, and property damage to compensation for non-economic, subjective forms of harm, such as pain and suffering or lost enjoyment of activities.

Consult an Injury Attorney in Los Angeles