July 11, 2007

The “Tort Law”

The “Tort Law” covers all personal injury claims filed in either the insurance companies or the civil courts. It serves as the main and standard basis on how should a case be given verdict. Understanding its provisions, however, can be complicated on the part of the petitioners or the claimants victimized by the various types of misconduct. Hence, most of them made the right decision of appointing their own and trusted personal injury lawyer to assist them in pursuing their claim cases. Doing this move certainly increases their chances of having a successful claim case. However, it is very much important to determine on which category their cases fall before filing it accordingly.

This article discusses the two major categories of personal injury litigation, negligence and intentional acts. This might as well guide the injured victims on what track should they follow in the attainment of their goals of upholding their rights.

Negligence

Negligence is the most common grounds for personal injury cases. This happens when an individual fails to exercise cautiousness in performing his or her duties resulting to unintended harm or injury to other people. In order to prosper and subsequently prevail in negligence cases, the injured victims must then prove these four elements:

1)    The accused has the obligation to provide them rational care or standard medical treatment for health care providers
2)    The accused has defied the accepted manner of exercising their duties.
3)    Their injuries have resulted from such defiance.
4)    Their injuries are logically probable to cause harm to them.

To sight a clear example, a bus driver has the obligation to secure the safety of passengers and to maintain his control to the bus at all times. Any mistake or carelessness may result in tragic accidents causing severe injuries to the passengers or any other people on the road. Then, if this scenario happens, the injured victims have their strong points of arguments that the bus driver who performs such neglectful acts is legally liable and should pay monetary damages to cover their physical injuries and all other expenses that may come along with it.

Usually, negligence cases include vehicular accidents, medical malpractice, animal attacks and “slip and fall” among others.

Intentional Acts

In contrary to negligence, intentional torts are wrongful actions done deliberately which cause harm or injuries to other people. However, the injured victims will have a hard time using this line of reasoning in pursuing a personal injury claim. This is because intentional wrongful acts are not guaranteed by most policies of the insurance companies. Nevertheless, intentional acts may be used as bases for civil or criminal offenses. Assault and battery, character defamation and child abuse are some of the considered intentional acts.