How to Win a Personal Injury Case
While every injury case is different, most personal injury cases involve the same legal rules and issues. In the typical injury case, the plaintiff – the person who is injured – has to prove four legal “elements” in order to prove “negligence” and win their case against the defendant – the person or company legally responsible for their injuries:
- The Plaintiff has to show that the defendant owed a duty of care;
- The Plaintiff has to show that the defendant breached that duty of care;
- The Plaintiff has to show they suffered injuries or damages;
- The Plaintiff has to show that the defendant’s negligence – its breach of a duty of care – was a cause of their damages – what the law calls “causation.”
In order to win your serious personal injury case, you have to prove all four of these legal elements—duty of care, breach, causation, and damages. If any of these four elements cannot be proven, the defendant cannot be held legally responsible for their negligence.
While the legal rules governing negligence claims are deceptively simple, proving the required elements of your catastrophic injury case requires thorough and methodical investigation and analysis and step-by-step preparation of your legal case. Our Golden personal injury attorneys have a long track record of success in establishing everything the law requires to win a serious injury case like yours.
What Is Causation?
Even if the defendant breached their legal duty or care, the law still requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant’s breach was a cause of their injuries – what the law calls “causation.” Causation is just a legal term that means showing how the defendant’s negligence caused your injury.
Because it is often beyond serious dispute that the defendant owed a legal duty and breached their duty, insurance companies and their paid defense lawyers will often argue that the plaintiff’s injuries resulted from some cause - any cause – other than the defendant’s negligence. Defense lawyers will frequently comb through years of the injured plaintiff’s medical records looking for any evidence of a pre-existing condition that they can use as an alternate explanation for the plaintiff’s injuries.
Our Golden personal injury lawyers have decades of experience in working with medical providers and other expert witnesses to show how the plaintiff’s injuries directly resulted from the defendant’s negligence. We know the typical tricks that insurance companies and their paid lawyers and experts use to confuse the issues on the critical element of causation – and how to expose those tricks as the deceptions that they are.
What Are Damages?
Damages are perhaps the most important element of your serious injury claim. After the other elements have been proved – the defendant’s legal duty of care, their breach of that duty, and the causation element – the most critical element is proving the full scope and extent of your injuries and how they have changed and will change your life. In a serious injury case, the medical bills are a significant element of your economic damages – that is, the damages that can be easily calculated and assigned an economic value. When you suffer a serious injury, you have a right to recover damages both for past medical bills and future medical bills – where, for example, your injuries are so serious that you will continue to require medical care and incur care-related expenses for things like therapies, equipment, doctor visits, and so forth into the future. Our Golden personal injury law firm has extensive experience in projecting out and proving up damages for past and future medical and other care expenses.
A serious injury also often results in missed time from work – and sometimes an inability to return to work or earn a living in the future. Our Golden personal injury lawyers know how to work with medical providers, vocational experts, and economists to show jurors how the nature and extent of your injuries caused you to lose income from working – or even how the defendant’s negligence robbed you of the ability to earn a living from work altogether. Your loss of income and the ability to earn a living are important economic damages that you are entitled to recover from the defendant under the law.
Economic damages are only one part of the equation. In many serious injury cases, our clients’ non-economic injuries like physical impairment and pain and suffering have a far greater impact on their quality of life after a serious accident. Our Golden personal injury attorneys have decades of experience in proving up these injuries, which may be less obvious or apparent in many cases, and in explaining to jurors how the importance and impact of these non-economic injuries on your life warrant even greater financial compensation than your serious economic damages and losses.
When your suffer serious injuries, turn to attorneys who understand how to fight for your rights and how to win the compensation you deserve. Reach out to The Komyatte Law Firm today by calling (720) 330-3914 or by filling out our online contact form and set up a free consultation.
Serious Lawyers for Serious Cases
The attorneys at The Komyatte Law Firm have over 45 years of combined experience in successfully handling serious personal injury cases like yours. We understand what it takes to diligently prepare and aggressively litigate your catastrophic injury case. Our track record of success in handling serious injury cases, from intake and investigation, to litigation and negotiation, to trying your case and proving your claims to a jury, speaks for itself. The big corporations and insurance companies know us and they know our reputation – that we are ready, willing, and able to protect your rights in court, and that we have the ability and expertise to win at trial when your rights are on the line.
From our office in Golden, we not only serve clients across Colorado, including Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and beyond, but in states all across the country. Call today at (720) 330-3914 or contact us online to set up a free consultation.
What Is Duty of Care?
In order to hold a defendant legally liable for negligence, the plaintiff first has to show that the defendant owed a legal “duty of care.” This means the defendant had a responsibility to do a certain thing (or to not do a certain thing) in a certain set of circumstances and that the law recognizes that responsibility. A classic example of a legal duty of care is the legal responsibility to act reasonably in operating a motor vehicle. Other legal duties may arise based on certain specific circumstances – such as the legal duties a landowner may owe to individuals who enter onto the landowner’s property. The existence of a legal duty is usually decided by a judge – although a jury may be asked to decide disputed questions of fact that the judge needs to consider in making their legal ruling. Our Golden personal injury lawyers have the legal knowledge and training to successfully prove that the defendant owed a legal duty of care in your serious personal injury case.
What Is Breach of Duty?
Even where the defendant owes a legal duty of care, the plaintiff also has to show that the defendant somehow “breached” – or violated – that duty. Just as legal duties of care are often defined as an obligation to act in a reasonable fashion under the circumstances, breach of duty can be understood as the failure to exercise reasonable care – to act as a reasonable person would act under the same or similar circumstances. A classic example of breach of a legal duty is someone who is careless in operating a motor vehicle – by speeding, failing to obey traffic signals, or failing to keep a proper lookout.
Breach of a legal duty is often a hotly contested element on a negligence claim – as defendants’ insurance companies will rarely admit that their insured actually breached a legal duty of care, even where it is obvious, because this is a major step towards establishing that the insurance company has an obligation to pay the plaintiff for their injuries and damages.
Having a skilled personal injury attorney on your side is critical in proving the breach element of your serious injury case. The insurance company pays its own lawyers to muddy the waters as to the defendant’s breach of duty on even the most straightforward negligence claims. Insurers will also often hire expert witnesses to concoct elaborate defenses intended to sow doubt as to the most obvious breaches of a legal duty. Our Golden personal injury attorneys have the experience to cut through the insurance company’s efforts to confuse the issues and get to the heart of proving the breach element in your serious injury case.
