El Centro Personal Injury Lawyer
While common wisdom might hold that accidents happen without anyone being able to prevent them, the reality is that many accidents that result in serious injuries could have been prevented if one person involved had acted more responsibly. When another’s reckless or careless actions result in a person getting hurt, they can often take legal action and demand financial restitution for all their ensuing losses.
When you have suffered serious physical harm because of someone else’s misconduct, you should discuss your legal options with an experienced El Centro personal injury lawyer. Injury litigation can be complex and time-consuming under even the most plaintiff-friendly circumstances, and a seasoned attorney’s guidance can prove invaluable to securing a positive result and obtaining every cent of the compensation you deserve.
Why Get Help from Private Legal Counsel?
One important thing to understand about personal injury litigation compared to criminal cases is that they work differently from each other in theory and practice. For example, unlike people accused of crimes, people who have been injured by another’s negligence are not guaranteed legal representation under the Constitution, so they would not have counsel provided to them if they try to sue without an attorney.
Furthermore, a civil plaintiff only has to prove it is more likely than not that someone else is responsible for their injuries. In contrast, criminal prosecutors have to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This tends to make civil claims substantially more complicated, since there is often more subjective evidence—and subjective interpretations of that evidence—involved in the case process.
Put simply, an attorney in El Centro from our firm can act as both an advocate and a resource for information about how a personal injury case will proceed.
Handling All Types of Accidents and Injuries
We have experience handling cases built around all kinds of different accidents stemming from various forms of negligence, including:
- Automobile accidents, including those involving commercial trucks and tractor-trailers
- Motorcycle crashes
- Collisions between motor vehicles and bicyclists or pedestrians
- Slipping and tripping accidents, and other injuries caused by dangerous property conditions
- Negligence by healthcare providers
- Neglect or abuse inside nursing homes
- Defective consumer products, including unreasonably dangerous medications
We know how to demand comprehensive compensation for past and future losses caused by serious and even catastrophic injuries, including those resulting in permanent paralysis, loss of brain function, or disfigurement caused by high-degree burns. Even if your injury will affect the rest of your life, a dedicated personal injury lawyer in El Centro could ensure you are compensated fairly for every economic and non-economic form of harm that injury will result in.
Understanding the Legal Theory of Negligence
Under certain circumstances, it is possible to hold a person or company “strictly liable” for a personal injury. This means the named defendant is automatically liable to pay for losses suffered by the injured plaintiff if specific criteria are met. Most of the time, though, holding someone else accountable for a personal injury in El Centro requires proving that they were legally negligent.
Under California civil law, “negligence” is when someone causes someone else to sustain an otherwise avoidable injury by violating a “duty of care” they owed that second person. In this context, a duty of care is an implicit or explicit legal obligation to act a certain way under certain circumstances. For example, the obligation automobile drivers have to follow traffic laws and keep their attention entirely on driving while behind the wheel.
Along similar lines, a “breach of duty” can be an expressly illegal act or simply a careless one, so long as it runs contrary to the expectations imposed on the defendant by their specific duty of care. It is worth noting, though, that what actually qualifies as a breach of duty can be surprisingly subjective, depending on the circumstances. Consider, for example, a driver who swerves into another car on the highway because they did not check their blind spots before merging, compared to a driver who swerves and ends up in the same type of collision because a tree branch suddenly fell into their lane in front of them.
What Compensation Could Be Recoverable?
Anyone found liable for a personal injury in California can be made to pay for all economic and non-economic forms of harm that injury will ever cause the injured person to experience, including things like:
- Medical bills
- Physical discomfort and pain
- Emotional anguish and psychological trauma
- Lost work income, benefits, or long-term earning capacity
- Lost enjoyment of life, potentially including lost “consortium” with a spouse
- Personal property damage/loss and other out-of-pocket accident-related expenses
As an El Centro personal injury attorney could explain, state law limits total recovery for certain types of cases and certain types of plaintiffs. Most notably, uninsured drivers who are injured in auto accidents cannot seek civil recovery for any non-economic damages stemming from their wreck, even if someone else was 100 percent at fault for it.
Getting Past Legal and Procedural Obstacles to Recovery
That “No Pay, No Play” rule is far from the only roadblock that may get in the way of a personal injury lawsuit in El Centro. California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 gives most people who get hurt through the negligence of another person just two years to file their claims, or else they will be time-barred from ever seeking compensation for that particular injury.
Furthermore, California court precedent holds that personal injury plaintiffs can be assigned percentages of comparative fault based on the degree to which they contributed to causing their injuries through their own reckless or careless actions. A court—or insurance company acting with the knowledge that a court would support them—could reduce the total compensation available to that plaintiff by that same percentage.
Contact an El Centro Personal Injury Attorney Today
No one deserves to get injured because another acted irresponsibly or unlawfully around them. Unfortunately, that exact scenario plays out all too often. When you are not familiar with your rights under civil law and how best to enforce them, you may have to pay for all your injury-related losses yourself.
Help is available from a capable and compassionate El Centro personal injury lawyer. Call today for a consultation.
