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

 

St Johns Car Accident Lawyer - Negligence

 

In the case of a serious injury accident, whether it be a motor vehicle accident, a slip and fall, or an industrial accident, the issue of negligence will come up. Was the incident purely accidental with no one but bad luck and nature involved? Or were there some more sinister forces at play and perhaps was someone at fault in the accident that caused others to be injured or killed? These are the questions a St Johns car accident lawyer must ask in order to be able to file a compensation claim on behalf of the injured parties.

Negligence is a complex legal term that requires several proofs in order to be shown to be present. It represents a situation where a person, government agency, or corporation behaves in a way inconsistent with the way any reasonable person would act. The attorney may need to determine how a reasonable person would actually act before deciding there was a deviation from that regarding the incident.

The St Johns car accident lawyer also needs to prove that a duty of care existed between the person who caused the accident and the person who was injured. Every driver on the road owes a duty of care to everyone else on the road to make sure their behavior doesn’t cause an injury accident. Rail road companies owe a duty of care to their passengers to make sure the passengers arrive safely.

The lawyer’s proof must go further and must show that a breach of the duty of care existed. A breach in the duty of care means that some kind of substandard behavior took place. In the case of the rail road company, the rail road could have shown a breach of the duty of care by having poor safety practices or failed to keep up with its own safety practices. A doctor who makes a surgical mistake is falling below the standards for his or her profession.

Lastly, the St Johns car accident lawyer must prove that actual damages exist regarding the injured party or parties. Losses may be the cost of medical care, lost wages, loss of ability to advance in one’s career and the loss of ability to do activities of daily living.

Notice how some costs are easy to determine, like the cost of medical care, while other costs are difficult to determine, like the cost of losing the ability of activities of daily living. This is why determining the claim is so difficult. When processing the claim, the St Johns car accident lawyer must determine the value of three types of damages: special damages, general damages and punitive damages.

With special damages, the computation is easy. These represent things that have intrinsic monetary values and include losses such as medical bills, the cost to repair a car, the cost of a rental car, the value of lost wages and the value of future lost wages.

With general damages, the losses are harder to place a value on. These damages have no intrinsic monetary value and include things like losses incurred in alienation of affection, losses from a lack of ability to do one’s favorite hobbies and the loss of ability to advance in one’s career.

With punitive damages, the value is placed on whether or not the behavior of the person who caused the accident was malicious or with bad intent. Punitive damages are not always demanded of the individual who caused the accident but, when they are asked for, they are designed to punish the individual.

The claim is then assembled to include all values. The case may go to a court trial. The claim may also be settled out of court before reaching the trial stage.

LAWYER HELPLINE: ☎ 855 804 7142