Accidents happen, and when they do, victims can be seriously injured. If the accident was caused by negligence, the victim can seek financial compensation through a personal injury claim. Negligence, which essentially means “carelessness,” is a legal term that comes into play when someone fails to exercise reasonable care in a certain situation.
In most personal injury cases, you’ll need to prove that the opposing party was negligent in order to recover compensation. An experienced personal injury attorney can help you do this while you focus on your health and recovery. Until then, read on to learn more about what negligence means and how it applies in personal injury law.
Elements of Negligence in a Florida Personal Injury Claim
To think of it simply, negligence is when someone acts carelessly and without the caution they were expected to use in a situation. Negligence includes four distinct legal elements. All four elements must fit together, like pieces of a puzzle, to succeed with your claim in Florida.
Elements of negligence include:
- Duty: People owe certain duties to others depending on the situation they are in. For example, someone driving a vehicle owes a duty of care to follow traffic signals and drive safely. Business owners owe a duty to keep their premises safe for visitors on the property. Doctors and nurses owe a duty to treat patients with a standard level of care. Duties apply to all of us, wherever we go.
- Breach of duty: Failing to follow an expected duty of care is considered a breach of duty. A driver who runs a red light, or a doctor who prescribes the wrong medicine could be said to have breached a duty of care to others.
- Causation: If a duty has been breached, courts will look at whether that breach of duty caused the accident victim’s injuries. There must be a logical connection between a defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injuries in a personal injury case.
- Damages: The final and sometimes simplest element to prove is damages. The injured victim must have suffered actual damages such as physical injury, emotional distress, medical bills, or more.
Each of these elements must be proven “by a preponderance of the evidence,” which is about a 51% or more likelihood.
What Is a Duty of Care and When Does It Apply?
In a personal injury case, negligence does not happen without someone owing a duty to others. Duty of care can be based on law, customs, expectations, or simple common sense in some circumstances. When someone follows a duty of care, they act to avoid risks of danger and harm to others.
People are generally held to a “reasonable person” standard. In other words, courts would ask if someone acted as a reasonable person should have done in any given situation. For example, a driver is expected to act as a reasonable driver would and stop when they approach a stop sign.
What Is Breach of Duty?
Breach of duty asks: Did the other person act unreasonably or carelessly under the circumstances? If the other party should have done something differently to prevent a dangerous accident, they could have breached their duty of care.
An example might be a store owner leaving debris or a dangerous spill on their floor without cleaning up.
What Is Causation in a Negligence Claim?
Causation requires a logical connection between a person’s conduct (or failure to act) and the victim’s injuries. In legal terms, the defendant’s conduct must have been the direct and proximate cause of an accident.
Another way to look at causation is this: would you have been injured if the defendant followed their duty of care? To prove causation, an accident must also have been a predictable result of the at-fault party’s actions.
An example would be a motorist driving recklessly and failing to stop at an intersection, causing a car crash. A counter-example might be a multi-vehicle crash in which the defendant’s actions were one of several possible causes for the plaintiff’s injuries.
Causation is usually a hotly contested element in a negligence claim. This element can be proven through physical evidence, video footage, witness testimony, and other key pieces of evidence.
What Damages Are Available in a Florida Negligence Claim?
Injured accident victims will need to show actual harm and suffering due to another person’s conduct. Damages can be shown through medical bills, lost wages, out-of-pocket expenses, emotional distress, and other losses.
Compensation generally includes both economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages are financial losses such as missed time at work, medical expenses, cost of traveling to follow-up appointments, and other losses that can be tallied up on a spreadsheet.
Non-economic damages are more challenging to add up as a dollar sum. Pain and suffering, reduced quality of life, loss of companionship, disability, disfigurement, and the long-lasting toll of an accident all fall within this category.
Florida law also allows for punitive damages, but only in rare cases. You must prove that the at-fault party acted egregiously with “clear and convincing evidence” to recover them.
A Fort Lauderdale Personal Injury Lawyer Can Help You Prove Negligence
If you were hurt in an accident in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, you could have important legal rights, including the right to pursue compensation. When someone else’s negligence caused your injuries, you should not have to bear the costs on your own. An experienced Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyer will help you prove negligence and pursue monetary damages in your case.
Call (954) 361-3997 or contact Workman Car Accident and Personal Injury Lawyers today to schedule a free consultation.
