LAWYER HELPLINE: ☎ 855 804 7142

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 Hamilton car accident lawyer without further obligation then just use the helpline or send the contact form or email our offices and a Hamilton 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.

 

Hamilton Car Accident Lawyer - Negligence

 

Negligence is an important term in any civil lawsuit involving an accident or injury in which a person or persons were injured. Accidents that prove to be purely accidental cannot be related to a negligence lawsuit. In order for a lawsuit to happen regarding an accident or injury, the Plaintiff’s lawyer must show negligence was involved on the part of the defendant.

Negligence is able to be proved if the defendant performed an act of commission against another person or failed to act in an act of omission in such a way that any reasonable person would act. It has to be something out of the ordinary and beyond which the average person would do in the same situation.

The Hamilton car accident lawyer must be able to show that a “duty of care” existed in the situation. Duty of care basically means having the responsibility over the health and welfare of another person. Believe it or not, when we get in the car and drive, we owe a duty of care to every other driver on the road; it involves the need to drive carefully so as to avoid an accident. The railroad company owes a duty of care to everyone riding the rails to make their trip safe and without incident. If the duty of care was breached, it means that the standards of behavior were below that of a reasonable person.

A breach of the duty of care must be shown in any accident or injury case. The Hamilton car accident lawyer must prove that the level of behavior of the defendant in the case was substandard when compared to others. This could, for example, extend to a doctor that performed a surgery in a substandard way and the surgery injured the patient.

Of course, if an injury or accident happens and the victim doesn’t suffer any loss in their life, there is really no case. The loss can be as simple as having to pay a lot of medical bills, which would, in turn, be requested to be paid by the defendant. Losses can be as complex as loss of ability to enjoy a person’s hobby. Each of these things is important, though, and are included in a claim.

A legal claim usually includes two types of damages: “special damages”, which are damages that have an easy monetary value attached to them, and “general damages” or damages that have no easy monetary value attached to them. The lawyer attempts to take each of the general damages and puts a monetary value on them in the best way possible.

A claim, therefore, is the sum of the following items: pain and suffering of the patient, loss of wages the patient suffered, loss of future wages the patient may lose, the cost of medical bills, the cost to replace a damaged car, the cost to repair a damaged car, the cost of a rental car used while the car is not available, disability costs, such as the cost of home health nursing care and the cost of disability equipment, and the “cost” of things like the loss of ability to perform the activities of daily living or hobbies.

When a claim is made, the Hamilton car accident lawyers involved get together to try and settle the claim out of court. If this cannot happen, the case goes to a court trial to be settled by a judge or jury.

There is always going to be a statute of limitations to pay attention to. The statute of limitations represents the amount of time the Plaintiff’s lawyer has to file a compensation claim before such a claim would be considered invalid. The statute of limitations can begin at the time of the accident or can begin from the moment the negligent aspect of the case was discovered.

LAWYER HELPLINE: ☎ 855 804 7142