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

 

Mississauga Car Accident Lawyer - Negligence

 

The use of the term, negligence, is generally considered a legal one and is a term used particularly in cases where an accident or injury has occurred and a person has been injured. Some accidents are simply accidental and no one is negligent. Other times, there is an individual, company or other government agency that is at fault and caused the injury to the victim.

The trick with negligence is for the Mississauga car accident lawyer to prove that the individual believed to be negligent performed an act of commission (a positive action) or an act of omission (a negative action or the lack of doing something) that a reasonable person in the same situation would not do. When the lawyer can show this, he or she is well on the way to proving the situation of negligence.

The Mississauga car accident lawyer is obligated first to show that something known as a “duty of care” existed. A duty of care comes when a person bears some responsibility over the health and welfare of another. A doctor owes a duty of care to his or her patient not to do something that harms the patient. Every motorist owes a duty of care to every other motorist with the implication that we drive in such a way as to avoid an accident.

Secondly, the Mississauga car accident lawyer must show that the duty of care in any given situation was breached. He or she must show that the behavior of the individual or individuals involved was somehow substandard and fell below the proper standards for duty of care. In rail road accidents, for example, the lawyer must show that the rail road company failed to maintain their rails or failed in some other way and this failure caused the accident. Ideally, the lawyer will show that a specific standard was not met and that this was the cause of the accident.

Finally, the Mississauga car accident lawyer needs to show that the injured party suffered some kind of significant, definable loss as a result of what the defendant in the case did. Losses can be clear and monetary, such as hospital expenses or the cost to replace a car. Losses can also be non-monetary and more nebulous, such as a person’s pain and suffering or loss of ability to do hobbies. In such cases, the lawyer must put a monetary value on these nebulous things and put them into the compensation claim.

When these things are put together, then a claim can be filed against the person who was negligent. The contents of the claim can be great and include both “special damages” and “general damages”. Special damages include those items that can be easily totaled up, such as wage losses and hospital bills. These are totalled easily and are included as part of the claim. General damages are the more nebulous damages talked about earlier. They include things like pain and suffering, loss of ability to do the acts of daily living, and lack of ability to enjoy life. These things are much harder to calculate and sometimes the lawyer must make an educated guess as to the value of these types of things.

In total, the contents of a claim might look like this: medical expenses, wages lost from the time of the accident until the time of the settlement, loss of future wages, expenses to get a car fixed or to replace a car altogether or the cost of a rental car, pain and suffering, loss of ability to do hobbies or do activities of daily living, home health nursing costs and the cost of disability-related equipment.

Lawyers need to remember that, with any civil lawsuit, there is a statute of limitations. The statute of limitations is the time a lawyer has to file any type of claim against the defendant. Any claim attempt past the statute of limitations is likely to be denied.

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LAWYER HELPLINE: ☎ 855 804 7142