Barrie Car Accident Lawyer - Personal Injury Compensation Claim

LAWYER HELPLINE: ☎ 855 804 7142


Personal Injury Lawyers

There are over 500,000 motor vehicle collisions in Canada every year which cause almost 250,000 people to be injured, over 20,000 of which are critical injuries of which about 3,000 are fatalities. There are about 8 deaths every day on Canadian roads and there is a serious injury every 2 minutes resulting in over 100,000 claims for compensation ever year in Canada. If you would like to talk to a Barrie car accident lawyer without further obligation then just use the helpline or send the contact form or email our offices and a Barrie car accident lawyer who deals exclusively in personal injury accident claims will speak to you with free advice and information on how best to preserve your legal rights to compensation for your injuries.

 

Barrie Car Accident Lawyer - Negligence

 

Personal injury lawyers have a tough job to do when it comes to determining the issue of negligence in cases where their client has become injured in an accident that happened as a result of the behavior of another. Some accidents are truly accidental, while others are clearly a case of negligence. The “person” causing the accident or injury could actually be several people, a corporation or a government agency.

So how do we define negligence? It is the performance of an action or behavior that is not the same behavior that a reasonable person would do. A reasonable person, for example, would stop at a stoplight and failure to do so could, if other conditions are met, constitute negligence.

What other conditions need to be met before negligence can be proved and a claim documented? The personal injury lawyer must show that a duty of care existed between the defendant and the Barrie car accident lawyer’s client—the injured party. A duty of care exists, for example, between each and every motorist who has a duty of care to drive in the safest way as to avoid accident or injury to every other motorist. Similarly, an airline company owes a duty of care to its flying passengers to have proper safety protocols and to follow those protocols so that nothing happens to any of the travelers.

Furthermore, in order show negligence, the Barrie car accident lawyer must be able to show that a breach of the duty of care existed regarding the accident or injury. This implies that there is something in the behavior or actions of the presumably negligent defendant that fell below acceptable standards. What are acceptable standards? These vary from profession to profession and from situation to situation.

Doctors, for example, have a set of standards that are accepted for the profession. A doctor who fails to live up to these standards will have suffered a breach of the duty of care and is subject to being called negligent.

In order for the Barrie car accident lawyer to make a compensation claim against the defendant, he or she must demonstrate that actual losses took place. Losses can be nebulous, such as losses sustained in pain and suffering. Losses can be more concrete, such as the losses experienced by losing wages or by paying medical bills. If losses cannot be demonstrated, the claim cannot be assembled.

So how does the personal injury lawyer assemble the claim? The lawyer assembles the combination of special damages, general damages and punitive damages in order to create a decent claim. Special damages are the easiest aspect of a claim. They represent those things that have an intrinsic monetary value such as medical bills, lost wages and the cost to replace a car.

General damages are more esoteric and do not have an intrinsic monetary value. These values must be estimated in terms of how much they are worth. For example, what is the cost of the loss of one’s ability to advance in one’s career or the cost of losing the ability to do the activities of daily living?

Punitive damages are included in the claim if the defendant’s behavior or actions were particularly malicious or made with ill intent. These types of damages are a way to punish the defendant for their dangerous or bad behavior.

When the claim is assembled, the Barrie car accident lawyer must take the claim to the judge and begin a lawsuit against the defendant. The claim may be settled out of court with the agreement of all parties or it may go to a trial.

LAWYER HELPLINE: ☎ 855 804 7142