Free Online Legal Advice

Personal Injury Attorney Michael Grossman Explains the Basics of Texas Personal Injury Litigation

Most people who have been injured by somebody else have questions about their legal situations. If you’ve been injured in an accident in or around Dallas, free online legal advice may be easy to come by, but it’s not the answer to your problems. While many people try to seek out free online legal advice from websites or discussion boards, the truth is that no website can provide a comprehensive assessment of your legal situation. Each personal injury case is different, and you need an experienced attorney to ascertain the specifics of your situation and formulate an opinion on a case-by-case basis.

This article, however, may help you learn a little more about the basics of Texas personal injury law. To truly understand your legal situation, a website is not enough. Call us at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free) for a free and personalized assessment of your legal situation.

What is a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

According to the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, a personal injury is a type of injury that occurs as a result of the actions or inaction of another person or entity. Personal injuries include both physical injuries and the emotional suffering that accompanies them. In a personal injury lawsuit, the victim is called the plaintiff and the party that caused the injury is called the defendant.

One of the most basic concepts to understand about a personal injury lawsuit is that the victim is not automatically entitled to collect money from the defendant. In fact, the scales of justice are tilted in favor of the defendant, and the law presumes that he owes the victim nothing. The only way to recover what you deserve for your injuries is to gather sufficient evidence and present it persuasively enough to tip the scales of justice in your favor. In most instances, your evidence must demonstrate that the defendant was negligent, that he was the proximate cause of your injuries, and that you are entitled to damages. If you can’t accomplish this task, the law won’t allow you to recover for your injuries.

Why File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

Personal injury lawsuits have two purposes. First, when you file a personal injury lawsuit, you’ll be gaining the opportunity to receive reimbursement for your losses. In most cases, no amount of money can truly compensate a victim and his or her family for the physical and emotional repercussions of an accident. Following a personal injury, however, victims often incur steep medical bills and repair bills, and may need to take time off from work to recover. Suing the individuals responsible for your injuries allows you to recover the money you need to get back on your feet. Lost wages, loss of earning capacity, medical bills, pain and suffering, and other losses may all be compensable.

Second, filing a personal injury lawsuit allows you to punish the individual or entity that caused your injuries. By suing the responsible parties, you’ll ensure that they think twice before acting carelessly in a way that could endanger others in the future.

Who can File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

Anyone can file a lawsuit for any purpose. What really matters is being able to file a successful personal injury lawsuit. In order for your case to be successful, you’ll need to have evidence to meet your burden of proof on the four elements of a personal injury claim. Those elements are duty, breach, causation, and damages. Below, we’ll discuss each of these four elements in greater detail, and what it takes to demonstrate each one of them.

Duty

The first element of a successful lawsuit is being able to prove that the defendant owed you a duty of care to act in a way that wouldn’t cause you harm. Often, people owe each other the duty to behave as a reasonable person would behave in order to avoid hurting others. This means both avoiding unreasonably careless activities as well as taking affirmative precautions to protect others from getting hurt where a reasonable person would do so. The reasonable person duty of care is only one of many potential duties of care that may apply to the defendants in your case. The applicable duty of care varies greatly according to the people and circumstances involved. Here are just a few examples of instances in which the duty of care may vary:

• Homeowners. Property owners generally owe only a very low duty of care to trespassers who come onto their property without permission. In some instances, though, property owners may have a much greater duty to protect children from getting hurt on their property, even if those children are trespassing.
  
  
• Shopkeepers. Have you ever noticed signs at stores and restaurants warning you about wet floors or steps? We wouldn’t put up signs to provide houseguests in our homes with similar warnings. Stores and other places of business owe a greater duty of care to customers to prevent them from getting hurt on the property.
  
  
• Hotels and public transportation. Innkeepers and common carriers owe their patrons a particularly high duty of care in many instances.
  
  
• Doctors and medical professionals. Doctors and other members of the medical profession receive special training in order to be able to do their jobs. We expect that they’ll use their specialized knowledge when treating and diagnosing patients. As a result, the law demands that doctors treat patients with greater care than they owe other people. While on the job, doctors must exercise the care of a reasonable doctor, and not that of a reasonable person.
  
  
• Drivers. In many states, the duty of care owed by a driver to a passenger depends on whether the passenger is paying for a ride or simply a guest. In those states, the driver must be much more careful to protect the safety of a paying passenger in his car.

There are many duties of care and the duty that applies in your case is not always obvious. Depending on which duty of care applies in your situation, you may have a much easier or much harder time proving liability. These variations constitute one reason why after you suffer a personal injury in Dallas, free online legal advice is not enough to give you an accurate picture of your legal situation.

Breach

After showing that the defendant owed him a duty of care, a successful plaintiff must also show that the defendant breached that duty of care. Proving that the defendant breached the duty of care that he owed you usually requires bringing evidence to court to show exactly what the defendant did or failed to do. If your case goes to trial, the jury will consider your evidence along with all of the circumstances involved in the accident and will determine whether or not the defendant breached the duty of care that you were owed.

Negligence is the most common way that a defendant violates his duty of care. Negligence refers to what we think of as simple carelessness. If a defendant is careless, even for a moment, he may be held responsible for the injuries that result.

Gross negligence is another way in which people violate the duty of care they owe to others. An action constitutes gross negligence when it’s highly likely to cause injury to others. Driving while intoxicated is one example of gross negligence.

Finally, you might prove breach of the applicable duty of care by demonstrating that the defendant acted with the intention to cause you harm. If you were assaulted, for example, you’ll most likely be arguing that the defendant’s actions were intentional.

Causation

The ability to prove causation is an essential part of any personal injury lawsuit. It’s just not enough to show that a defendant breached the duty of care he owed you. You must also demonstrate that his actions resulted in your injuries. This is not always easy, especially if you were unconscious when your injuries occurred or if many different parties played a role in causing your accident. Furthermore, the defendant you name in your lawsuit will probably try to prove that your injuries were caused by someone else, or even by you. If you can’t make the link between the defendant’s actions and your injuries, you’ll lose your case.

Damages

We’ve already talked a little bit about damages. If you are successful in proving liability, the defendant in your case will pay you damages to compensate you for your losses. Don’t confuse injuries with damages. If you are involved in an accident and you break your legs, your broken legs are your injuries. Your damages are the cost of treating your broken legs, the wages you’ve lost if you couldn’t return to work while you were recovering, and probably the value of other economic and non-economic losses you sustained as a result of your accident.

our tangible, economic losses are called special or economic damages. Examples of special damages include lost wages, loss of earning capacity, and medical bills. Sometimes, the cost of medical treatment can be easy to calculate, but if your medical treatment is ongoing or the full extent of your injuries is unknown, calculating special damages can be more complex. Calculating loss of earning capacity is frequently a complicated matter as well. If you’re unable to return to work, you must account for the time value of money, as well as hypothetical promotions, raises, and career changes when calculating how much you’ll demand that the defendant compensate you for income you’ll be unable to earn in the future.

Intangible non-economic losses are called general or non-economic damages. These damages include compensation for your emotional suffering associated with the accident. The amount of general damages that a case is worth depends highly on the circumstances. General damages can vary greatly from case to case even when physical injuries are very similar. After you’ve been injured in or around Dallas, free online legal advice is almost never sufficient to help you understand the amount of general damages you may be entitled to. To find out what your case is really worth, call Grossman Law Offices for a free consultation. After we ask you some important questions about your situation, we’ll be able to give you an idea of how a jury will put a price tag on your pain and suffering and other emotional losses.

One of the biggest mistakes that personal injury victims who don’t hire lawyers make is failing to account for all of their damages. Once you collect money from a defendant, you can’t go back and ask for more later. It’s important to get it right the first time and sue the defendant for all you’re entitled to in compensation for both your tangible and intangible losses.

Who is the Defendant? And Why it Matters

In many instances, it will not be entirely clear who was to blame for your injuries. In some cases, this is because the actions that ultimately led to your injuries may have happened long before your injuries occurred. For example, if you were involved in a car accident because there was a mattress lying in the middle of the road, the car or truck that was hauling the mattress may have been long gone by the time you hit the mattress with your car. In other cases, so many parties may have been involved in the events leading up to your accident that it can be difficult to know precisely which of them was negligent. It’s always possible that more than one of them may have been to blame, and when multiple individuals cause an accident they can all be named as defendants. In any event, a thorough investigation conducted by an experienced lawyer can usually identify the source of your injuries.

Besides the importance of conducting an investigation, there’s one other key thing to know about defendants. It’s important that your lawsuit involve a solvent defendant. A defendant is solvent when he has enough money to pay you damages. If a defendant is insolvent you won’t be successful in collecting damages even if you’re able to prove that he’s liable. This is a sad circumstance, but one that unfortunately does occur.

Because they know that if they appear insolvent they won’t be required to compensate an accident victim for his injuries, many defendants hide their assets to appear insolvent even when they’re not. At Grossman Law Offices, we perform asset checks on defendants to get a true picture of their available resources. If the defendant in your case is hiding something, chances are that we’ll find out about it.

What an Attorney can do for You

At Grossman Law Offices, many of our clients are sophisticated individuals who would have no problem picking up a textbook and learning the law. Nevertheless, plaintiffs who attempt to litigate their cases without attorneys are almost never able to recover what they could otherwise be entitled to. Pursuing a personal injury claim requires not only a complete understanding of the law, but also a large amount of time, the ability to apply the law to the facts of your individual case, expertise in discovery methods, and knowledge of the rules of civil procedure and evidence. Even the most legitimate of claims will be dismissed if the plaintiff fails to comply with a legal technicality. The best way, and often the only way, to ensure that your rights are protected is to hire a personal injury attorney.

The attorneys at Grossman Law Offices offer personal injury victims a number of services in every case that we handle. Our first priority is to make sure that you receive the medical care you need. Even if you’re uninsured or don’t think that you can afford treatment, we can refer you to a doctor who will take your situation into consideration. Next, we’ll get to work investigating your case. The sooner we begin our investigation, the stronger your case will be. It’s best to contact a lawyer as soon as possible to make sure that critical evidence doesn’t disappear before you have a chance to find it. After our initial investigation, we’ll handle every aspect of your case. We take all phone calls, meet all deadlines, develop trial strategies, and otherwise do whatever it takes to make sure that you receive the maximum compensation possible for your injuries.

If you’ve suffered a personal injury in or around Dallas, free online legal advice is not enough to protect your rights. Even seemingly tiny variations in the circumstances of two different accidents can have a big affect on the way each case is handled and ultimately resolved. For a free initial assessment of your legal situation, call Grossman Law Offices at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free). We’re available around the clock seven days a week to take your call.