Personal injury claims can be a complicated process. If you’re injured and have suffered damages, don’t go into it blindly. Instead, make sure you know what to expect when pursuing your claim.
Statute of Limitations
You may be wondering how long you have to file a personal injury lawsuit and when the clock starts ticking. The answer depends on where you live and what type of personal injury claim you want to pursue.
In most states, the statute of limitations for personal injury claims is two years from the date of the accident or last exposure to an unsafe condition. However, some state laws have shorter statutes of limitations. For example, California’s statute allows only one year for filing a lawsuit if your injuries were caused by medical malpractice. However, it’s three years if the injuries result from someone else’s negligence in general. In construction cases, that period is extended to ten years.
In the case of health-related injuries, the statute allows one or three years. It’s 1 year from the date the plaintiff is aware of the injury and 3 years from the date when the injury initially took place. In such cases, whichever is the earlier date is the one chosen as the statute.
The statute also varies depending on what type of injury occurred. If you were hit by a car while running across the street as opposed to being bitten by a dog while standing on your lawn, there are likely different statutes in place due to differences in negligence and fault requirements between these two scenarios. Therefore, you must know whether or not your case qualifies as one based on these factors before pursuing legal action.
Procedural Requirements
The procedural requirements for a personal injury claim are important to know because you must file your complaint within a year or two of the incident. It’s not as easy as just filing it once. If you’re filing a lawsuit, you’ll have to serve the defendants with notice of when and where they will be sued.
The time frame for serving notice is much shorter than what you have to wait before filing your complaint. Thus, make sure that any defendants get served in advance of when you file.
If there’s more than one defendant involved, you must meet separate deadlines for each defendant. For example, if there are three drivers involved in an accident and their negligence contributed equally to causing an injury or death, each driver must be served separately within 60 days of being named as a defendant in the case.
Investigation
After you’ve been involved in an accident and have started to recover physically, it’s important to make sure that you have all your ducks in a row when it comes to filing a claim. This means collecting evidence, organizing your claims so they are as strong as possible, and preserving what evidence there is of the incident.
The first step is investigation. The best way for this is by hiring an experienced personal injury attorney who can help guide you through the process of collecting evidence and preparing a comprehensive case against those responsible for the accident. Remember, just because someone else caused the crash doesn’t mean they’ll want to take responsibility. They may try anything they can do to avoid paying up.
A personal injury lawyer can help you with the investigation of your claim. Take the Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) case as an example. The AFFF Firefighter Foam Lawsuit puts forward the toxic chemicals AFFF manufacturers use in their firefighting products. The firefighting foam lawyers here gathered evidence in the form of victim testimonies as well as their medical reports as part of their investigation. In doing so, they showed that AFFF exposure led to cancer in many, including firefighters, military personnel, and ordinary people.
Because of such a thorough investigation, it was possible to build a strong case against the AFFF lawyers and their company.
Duty of Care
One important factor in pursuing a personal injury claim is the duty of care. Duty of care refers to the responsibility that an individual or company has to ensure that they do not cause harm to others. This includes several subcategories, including the duty to avoid negligence, the duty to warn, and the duty to ensure safety. Basically, it’s your responsibility as a person or business to take reasonable steps when interacting with other people in order to avoid causing them harm unnecessarily.
If you have been injured while working at home and feel like your employer did not take enough precautionary steps, this may be grounds for pursuing an injury claim against them.
Proximate Cause
Proximate cause is one of the most important factors in personal injury cases. In a nutshell, it means something must have been done or failed to be done that caused your injuries in some way. Proximate cause differs from legal cause because it doesn’t have to be the only thing that led to your injury. It just needs to be a significant contributing factor.
For example, if you were hit by a car while walking down the street and suffered injuries. As a result, the proximate cause would include both bad driving tactics (legal cause) and careless pedestrians who were crossing against traffic lights (proximate cause).
The best way to ensure that your personal injury claim is successful is to make sure you have all the facts before filing it. The more information you have, the better off you’ll be when it comes time to settle or go to trial. At the same time, it’s also vital that you have a personal injury attorney handle your claim. With their experience and skill set, they can build a strong case and help you win the claim.