Thursday, November 8, 2012

Personal Injury: What “Duty of Care” Means

Duty of Care | personal injury | pedestrian Accident

Image Source: http://armstrongjames.com/PedestrianRTA_2_4009361430.jpg

The legal theory of negligence is what governs most personal injury cases. As it is, this concept is used to determine who is at fault in the accident; in other words, it is entirely dependent on who was doing what.

If you have been injured in a personal injury accident such as a vehicle accident or slip and fall, one of the key elements that you must take into account is if the liable party owed you a duty of care.

In determining liability through negligence, there must be proof that the liable party breached or violated his or her duty of care towards you and other people in a certain situation. If such thing happened and it resulted in injuries, then it is said that there is negligence involved.

To begin with, every person has a legal duty to act with reasonable care in every situation. A reasonable standard of care, to be exact, should come in play here, and usually depends on the type of situation and the level of responsibility that a person carries on that instance.

Take for example a person driving a car on a busy road. As any average person would, he or she should be driving with the same level of care. To do so, he or she should maintain speed like the other motorists who are with him or her on the road, and should make sound driving decisions such as changing lanes carefully and slowly stopping the vehicle as the traffic in-front of him or her stops.

Another example is a female property owner in-charge of a residential or commercial area. She owed a duty of care to other people who are visiting her property. However, the level of care that she owes them depends on who the visitor is. If she is running a store, the highest duty of care is owed towards her customers. Trespassers, on the other hand, are owed the lowest of duty of care.

The failure to uphold a duty of care towards another person may lead to a lawsuit if there is injury involved. Incidentally, if you were injured because of another person’s negligence, then you should retain a Los Angeles injury attorney to establish a claim and be compensated for your suffered damages.

0 comments:

Post a Comment