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If you’re on either side of a personal injury lawsuit, then you’ll want to do your best to ensure you win the case. But depending on whether you are being sued or the one being sued, there are different steps you’ll need to take to ensure a favorable outcome. Our personal injury lawyers have put together this guide so you know exactly what steps to take to come out on the right side of your lawsuit.
If you are the one suing someone else for the injuries and losses you sustained due to their negligent actions, there are a few things you need to be able to prove to get the most out of your claim and maximize your settlement.
Duty of care is the first thing that needs to be proven in a personal injury lawsuit. We all have a duty of care to act in a reasonably careful manner to ensure the safety of our fellow citizens. In ordinary circumstances, like driving a car, that means paying attention to what we are doing, the flow of traffic, weather conditions, and obeying traffic laws. Any reasonable person would perform these actions to keep others safe which is called a duty of care. Some duties of care can be less obvious, like the duty of care that a medical doctor is supposed to uphold while performing his or her job.
Once a duty of care has been established, you need to be able to prove that the at fault party breached that duty of care. This means that they broke a law that they should have adhered to or acted in a manner that a reasonable person would not, which was the cause of the accident in question. This means they acted negligently by not acting in accordance with the law or otherwise in a safe manner.
For example, if someone ran a red light and caused an accident, the breach of duty of care would be running the red light because that is against the law (and even if it were not, it is not how an ordinarily careful driver should drive). Another example would be a store not clearing ice from their front porch, knowing that customers would have to walk over that ice. The breach would be not clearing the ice because any reasonable person would know that is a dangerous area for their customers to have to walk on.
By proving the other party had a duty of care and they breached that duty of care, you are making a solid start to a valid personal injury claim.
The third thing you need to prove to win your injury case is called causation. You need to be able to show that the other party’s breach of duty of care was the direct cause of the accident and therefore the reason you were injured. Using our previous example of running the red light, if the person injured was hit by the person that ran the red light, and the accident resulted in a broken left arm, then causation is established.
This part is sometimes straight forward, but can get tricky in certain circumstances. For instance, the accident victim could have had leg surgery on her left leg two years before the accident, and then re-injured the leg in the accident. In those situations, establishing causation can be more difficult than the broken arm situation (when the arm was clearly not broken before the accident).
The last piece of the puzzle for winning your personal injury claim as the plaintiff is proving that you suffered losses or damages as a result of the accident. These losses fall into two categories called economic damages and non-economic damages.
Economic damages are losses with a specific value such as medical bills, property damages and lost wages. The second category of losses are called non-economic damages which are losses without a specific value such as the pain and suffering you went through, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and other ways that your life was negatively affected due to your injuries.
If there were no provable damages that the injured party suffered, then the case cannot move forward because a personal injury case is resolved by compensating the injured party for their losses. If there are no losses, then there is nothing to compensate for.
So that is how you win a personal injury claim as the plaintiff. You need to be able to prove there was a duty of care, the person breached their duty of care, their negligent actions were the direct cause of the accident and that you suffered damages as a result of the accident. If all of those things can be proven, then you have a valid personal injury lawsuit and you can get compensation for your losses from the at fault party or their insurance company.
Once you have a valid claim, the next thing to do is compile as much evidence as possible supporting your claims of losses so that you can maximize your compensation package.
If you are being sued for personal injury, there are a few ways you can “win” the case but in some cases if the evidence against you is strong enough, then you won’t be able to win. Let’s look at a few ways attorneys can get a personal injury claim thrown out.
In some states, when the person filing the personal injury claim is proved to be 50% at fault or more for the accident happening, then they are not allowed to file a personal injury claim and it gets thrown out. This is because they played a majority role in the accident happening, so they cannot sue the other party.
Not all states follow this rule though, so you will need to check with a local personal injury attorney and see if your case falls under these rules if you were partially at fault.
As mentioned above, proving a duty of care and breach of duty of care is called negligence. If you can disprove the other party’s claims of negligence, then you can invalidate the personal injury lawsuit against you. Do this by showing that you did not break a law and acted as any reasonable person would have in that situation. If you can prove this, then you will have ruined the other party’s chances at their case moving forward because without negligence, there is no lawsuit.
Another way to get the case thrown out is if you can prove that your actions were not the direct cause of the accident. By showing that something else caused the accident, you are disproving a crucial key to injury lawsuits which is causation. Your negligent actions have to be a direct cause of the accident, otherwise the claim is not valid. So even if you were negligent, if those negligent actions were not the direct cause of the accident, then the case is not valid.
Another way to get the case invalidated is proving that the other party did not suffer any losses due to the accident. If they were not actually injured or didn’t have any financial or emotional losses and the accident is not negatively affecting their life in some way, then they don’t have any damages and therefore cannot pursue a personal injury claim.
This sounds strange, but insurance companies will often hire doctors to review medical records or even evaluate an injured person (which they are allowed to do in certain circumstances if a lawsuit is filed), and hope that their doctor will say that the injuries were not caused by the accident, or the treatment the injured person received was unreasonable.
The last way defense lawyers try to win injury cases is by blaming someone else as a “non party at fault.” If they are successful in blaming a third-party who is not named in the lawsuit, then the portion of the verdict awarded in favor of the plaintiff attributable to that non-party will not need to be paid by the defendant. This happens in multi-vehicle accidents, in which the person who ran the redlight seeks to blame another driver, maybe for cutting them off, or forcing them through the intersection, to deflect blame and reduce the amount of money they will have to pay.
As the plaintiff in a personal injury lawsuit, you will want to do what you can to get as much money as possible in your settlement. There are a few ways you can do this, but some of them are up to you and how much you document your recovery process.
The first way to maximize your settlement is detailed record keeping of all losses accrued due to the accident. This means property damage costs, medical expenses, physical therapy bills, lost wages and any other monetary costs.
The second way is detailed documentation of your recovery process such as the pain you endured on an everyday basis, how much the recovery process negatively affected you and any other details that can help to further prove how much your injuries negatively affected you. This part goes towards your non-economic damages portion of the settlement and having evidence of all of this will help to prove what you went through so you can increase your compensation.
Whether you are the plaintiff or the defendant in a personal injury case, reach out to us to discuss the details of your lawsuit. We have helped countless clients with personal injury cases ranging from car accidents to slip and falls or product liability lawsuits. We have the knowledge and experience to get the best possible results with any case so you know you are getting excellent help when you work with our law firm.
We offer free case consultations 24/7 over the phone and in our Colorado Springs offices during business hours so feel free to stop by or give us a call and speak with one of our attorneys.
This article was written by Michael Stuzynski of Rector Stuzynski Law Firm. Michael is a decorated personal injury attorney that has been helping Colorado Springs injury victims get compensation since 2019. With hundreds of injury settlements under his belt, he is an expert in all areas of personal injury law and litigation.
We provide legal services for personal injury and accident victims throughout the state of Colorado, but we focus on clients in these areas: Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Cimarron Hills, Northeast Colorado Springs, Southeast Colorado Springs, Stratmoor, Fort Carson, Air Force Academy, East Colorado Springs, Old Colorado City, Pleasant Valley, Broadmoor, Stratton Meadows, Fountain, Northwest Colorado Springs, Gleneagle, Northgate, Briargate, Monument, Woodmoor, Black Forest, Pueblo, Canon City, Larkspur, Security-Widefield, Peyton, Falcon, Calhan, Castle Rock, Teller County, El Paso County, Elbert County, Park County, Douglas County and nearby cities.
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