Proving Fault in a Personal Injury Claim
If you’ve been hurt in an accident, you may be worried about how you’ll recover the money you’re owed for your injuries. Perhaps you and the other party involved in an accident disagree on what caused the incident, and you’re worried that you won’t know how to show who was truly at fault.
Don’t try to go up against skilled insurance companies or make your way through the byzantine legal world without a helping hand. The personal injury attorneys at Massood & McCluskey are here to help you get the money you deserve. Our lawyers will deploy sophisticated factual investigation and accident reconstruction techniques to help you prove to the court why the other party was at fault, and why you’re entitled to compensation for the injuries caused by the at-fault party.
Fault may not be clear-cut
In a serious injury accident, it isn’t always entirely clear how the accident occurred or who caused it. In fact, multiple parties may bear a portion of the blame for the accident which caused your injuries. Courts in New Jersey will divide up the full cost of your injuries after an accident among the at-fault parties. For example, a driver who was distracted by their phone and began to brake too late to avoid an accident may be partially at fault for a rear-end crash, but if his car’s brakes had been defectively manufactured, then the brake or vehicle manufacturer may also be partially at fault for the accident.
Negligence explained
In most cases, the person at fault for an accident acted negligently in causing the accident (though reckless or deliberate conduct may also be to blame). In determining whether a defendant was negligent, the court will look at whether that person had a duty to the victim to act in a certain way, whether he or she breached that duty, whether the breached duty is what caused the accident, and whether injuries resulted from the accident.
Drivers have duties to one another to drive safely, observing all laws and rules of the road to ensure that other drivers do not get hurt. If another driver fails to stop at a red light and hits your car, that driver breached his duty to drive safely, and will owe you money for the injuries caused. However, if a driver, taking all possible precautions, couldn’t see that your car was stopped on the road ahead due to conditions beyond her control, that driver may not be at fault. You may instead have a case against the local authorities who failed to indicate that drivers should use caution in driving around a blind curve, or otherwise engineered a roadway defectively.
Make sure that you recover all the money you’re owed when you’re hurt in a New Jersey accident, including damages for your pain and suffering, lost wages, property damage, and costs of medical care and rehabilitation. Contact the experienced, personal injury-focused Wayne law firm of Massood & McCluskey for a no-cost consultation on your potential accident lawsuit, at 1-844-465-4487.
