Identification of the party at fault reveals the identity of the person that must ensure compensation of the accident victim’s losses. Lawyers work with their clients, in order to carry out that identification process.
How do lawyers seek clues that help to reveal the at fault party’s identity?
A personal injury lawyer in Spruce Grove would study a client’s case, in order to discover all of the potential blameworthy parties. For each party, the same attorney would need to find the answer to 2 questions:
-What was the extent of that same party’s liability?
-Which of those potential defendants has purchased insurance? A lawyer would not feel compelled to file a lawsuit against someone that lacked insurance coverage.
While a client’s lawyer carries out an investigation, the other party’s attorney devotes time to completing the same task. After those two investigations, if the insurance company and the lawyer have failed to produce the same findings, then the insurance company could become the target of a lawsuit.
Who was negligent?
Typically, the at-fault party has demonstrated some level of negligence.
Lawyers’ training has taught them how to look for evidence of negligence in the actions made by the opposing side.
What questions do lawyers ask, when seeking to determine who might have been careless and neglectful?
• What was each party’s duty? Did either party fail to carry out his or her duty?
• Did either party breach a recognized duty? If so, how?
• Did that identified breach cause the claimant/plaintiff to get injured?
• Did that injury cause the claimant/plaintiff to suffer measurable damages?
Note that a claimant’s desire to state that the opposite party was negligent does not provide grounds for charging the same party with having been careless and neglectful. Hence, any claimant or plaintiff in a personal injury case must produce evidence that supports a positive answer to all the questions listed above.
In other words, someone that had sustained only a tiny cut, as the result of an accident would not have a strong personal injury case. He or she would not have suffered a measurable loss.
Furthermore, a defendant must follow the duty that was stated in personal injury law. A motorist that hit a pedestrian while going slowly through a stop sign could not claim an absence of carelessness and neglect. That same motorist would have chosen to break the law, an act that is a sure sign of negligence.
Yet, if a driver that was in a line of traffic on a highway, were to pass a stranded driver in distress, that action would not qualify as a negligent act. The driver that had been going down the highway had no duty to stop.