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There are many situations in life where you might be injured due to the poor decisions or negligence of another person. When that occurs, you need to find legal counsel quickly to preserve your right to compensation.
Personal injury claims depend on the related concepts of duty and negligence. To recover compensation from another party, they must have had a duty to act and then breached that duty in some way. If you have been injured because of someone else’s wrongdoing, you may have a claim. Contact a St. Louis personal injury lawyer from McCready Law to learn more.
Personal injury law can encompass many types of situations. If someone was hurt due to another person’s actions, they may have a claim under the law. Personal injury attorneys in St. Louis can assist with all kinds of claims, including:
A duty of care means that a person has some type of legal obligation to behave in a certain way towards another person. A duty of care can be specific or general. Drivers take on a duty of care towards all other drivers on the road, whenever they get behind the wheel of a car. Drivers have that duty of care even if they are not licensed—the act of getting behind the wheel is enough to give them that duty of care.
A person might breach their duty of care in several different ways—negligence, recklessness, intentional actions, and strict liability. Understanding each of these ways can help people understand if they have a valid personal injury claim in St. Louis.
Negligence is when a person fails to exercise reasonable care, and is what people usually think of as an accident. It is something that can be the result of momentary distraction, or of someone failing to do their duty for a more extended time—like when negligence leads to dangerous conditions on property.
Recklessness implies a conscious choice to expose others to an obvious risk, while intentional behavior means actively trying to harm another. Assault and battery are examples of intentional behavior that can lead to personal injuries, as is road rage.
Finally, some cases are strict liability. For strict liability, the responsible party does not have to breach any duty to the victim. Instead, the injury must be linked to something that falls into a strict liability category. For example, Missouri has a strict liability policy for dog bites. Dog owners are almost always liable for injuries from dog bites unless the victim did something to cause the attack, such as injuring the dog or attacking the owner. A St. Louis attorney could help explore the breach in care that led to a personal injury claim.
There are three broad types of damages available in St. Louis personal injury claims—economic damages, non-economic damages, and punitive damages. Economic and non-economic damages are both types of compensatory damages, which have the purpose of trying to make an injured person whole again. Economic damages pay for direct and indirect expenses that are the result of the injury. Medical bills, lost wages, and things like paying for housekeeping when someone is physically unable to do it are examples of economic damages. Non-economic damages compensate people for intangible losses like loss of companionship or psychological trauma.
Punitive damages have nothing to do with making the victim whole. Instead, they focus on punishing the wrongdoer, and are only available when someone acts deliberately or with a flagrant disregard for others’ safety. A personal injury lawyer in St. Louis can explain which damages may be available in a specific case.
When you have been injured because of someone else’s negligence, you may wonder about your potential remedies. A St. Louis personal injury lawyer can help you explore those remedies after any incident that causes you compensable harm. The best way to find out how a lawyer can help is to schedule a no-obligation consultation with McCready Law today.