Articles

Habush Habush & Rottier - Appleton Personal Injury Lawyers

Building Your Personal Injury Case – Using Negligence

In order to successfully take your personal injury claim to court, you need to build a solid case with targeted evidence. In many cases, personal injury lawyers help their clients to build their cases around the concept of negligence. In fact, proving negligence on the part of the defendant is one of the most common ways to structure injury lawsuits.

The concept of negligence comes from the idea that all members of society are obligated to follow standards of reasonable conduct and take a reasonable amount of care in order to prevent injury or harm to themselves and those around them. If someone acts irresponsibly and does not exercise this reasonable amount of care, they may be held responsible for any damage caused by their negligence. As you can imagine, many personal injury lawsuits naturally fall back on the idea of negligence in order to prove fault. For example, if a homeowner invites guests over and one of them trips and falls over an exposed carpet seam, the homeowner may be considered negligent for failing to either cover the hazardous carpet seam or warn her guests about it. In this situation, if the guest is hurt because of falling, the homeowner may be held financially responsible for her guest’s injuries.

When deciding what qualifies as “negligent conduct,” the law does not look at what “most” people do, or what an “average” person would do, but rather at what a “reasonable” person would do. That is to say, even if the majority of homeowners would most likely do nothing about an exposed carpet seam, a reasonable person could be expected to recognize the potential trip and fall hazard and therefore take appropriate action to ensure the safety of her guests. In other words, the standards of conduct used to determine negligence are based not on what someone “would” do, but rather what they “should” do.

In a court of law, a defendant may only be deemed negligent if certain criteria of proof are met. First, you must establish what would qualify as a reasonable amount of care in your situation. Using the same example, the plaintiff would need to show that the homeowner should have taken steps to fix or warn her guests about the carpet seam. Second, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant did not meet the standards for reasonable care, by proving that the homeowner did not properly warn her guests about the trip and fall hazard. And finally, the plaintiff must prove that, because the homeowner failed to act, the plaintiff fell and hurt himself.

A good lawyer is a necessity for any personal injury case. If you need the services of an Appleton personal injury lawyer, call the Habush Habush & Rottier law firm at 800-472-9334 right away.