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

 

Nova Scotia Car Accident Lawyer - Negligence

 

In situations where an injury or accident has taken place, the victim or injured party in the accident wants to know if the accident was truly accidental or if the actions of another person could be considered negligent. Negligence is important because the victim’s attorney must demonstrate negligence in order to obtain compensation for his or her client. Negligence, in simple terms, means that a person, corporation or government agency acted in such a way that no reasonable person would have acted, given the same set of circumstances.

In order to demonstrate negligence, the Nova Scotia car accident lawyer for the victim must show that the person believed to have caused the victim’s injuries owed the victim a duty of care. Having a duty of care implies that the person who caused the victim’s injuries had some responsibility over the health and welfare of the victim. A medical practitioner owes a duty of care to every patient and is expected to behave in ways that foster the health and good development of the patient he or she treats. In the same way, a railroad company owes its riders a duty of care with the expectation that its practices don’t endanger the travelers on its rails.

The Nova Scotia car accident lawyer must further demonstrate that a breach in the duty of care existed regarding the incident. When a breach of duty exists, it is because the person responsible for the accident or injury acted or behaved in a substandard way and not in the way a reasonable person would. For example, a company would show a breach of the duty of care by having safety practices that are substandard enough to increase the likelihood of injury to its workers.

Lastly, no claim is possible without the demonstration of the victim’s losses. In other words, the victim must have suffered some kind of demonstrable loss such as wage losses or losses incurred in having to replace or repair a car. Losses can involve just about any aspect of the victim’s life and can be things with an innate monetary value or things with monetary values that have to be guessed at.

In assembling the claim, the Nova Scotia car accident lawyer must add the values of special damages, general damages and punitive damages. Special damages are the easiest to determine. These are things with an innate monetary value such as medical costs to treat the injury, the cost of losing future wages and the cost to repair a vehicle.

General damages are harder to put a finger on when it comes to monetary value. What is the value of the loss of ability to advance in one’s career or the loss of ability to do the normal activities of daily living? These are difficult questions to answer; nevertheless, the lawyer must put a value on these kinds of things and include these values in the claim.

Punitive damages do not always apply in cases of accident or injury. Punitive damages are sometimes requested in situations where the behavior of the person who caused the accident was particularly bad. If a person intentionally injures another person, he or she faces the possibility of incurring punitive damages.

When the components of the claim have been assembled, the victim’s lawyer can file this claim with the courts and ask for damages to be paid by the person who caused the accident. Sometimes, lawyers for the plaintiff and defendant attempt to settle the claim between themselves. If this is not possible, the lawyers take the case to the court system to be determined by a jury or judge.

The victim’s lawyer must respect the statute of limitations. It represents the amount of time the victim’s lawyer has to file the claim. If an attempt to file the claim is made after the statute of limitations has passed, the claim is generally not accepted.

LAWYER HELPLINE: ☎ 855 804 7142