motor vehicle lawsuit Vehicle Litigation

A lawsuit is required when liability is in dispute. The Defendant will then have the opportunity to respond to the complaint.

New York has a pure comparative negligence rule. This means that, when a jury finds you to be responsible for an accident and you are found to be at fault, your damages will be reduced according to your percentage of fault. This rule does not apply to the owners of vehicles that are which are rented out or leased to minors.

Duty of Care

In a negligence case the plaintiff has to prove that the defendant was obligated to exercise reasonable care. Almost everybody owes this duty to everyone else, however those who sit behind the driving wheel of a motorized vehicle have a greater obligation to the people in their area of activity. This includes ensuring that they don't cause accidents in motor vehicle lawyer vehicles.

Courtrooms assess an individual's actions with what a normal person would do under the same circumstances to determine what constitutes reasonable standards of care. This is why expert witnesses are often required in cases involving medical negligence. Experts with more experience in the field could be held to a higher standard of treatment.

When someone breaches their duty of care, it can cause harm to the victim and/or their property. The victim then has to prove that the defendant acted in breach of their duty of care and Motor Vehicle Case caused the injury or damages they sustained. Causation is a key element of any negligence claim. It requires proof of both the proximate and actual causes of the injury and damages.

For instance, if someone has a red light then it's likely that they will be hit by a vehicle. If their car is damaged they will be responsible for the repairs. The cause of a crash could be a fracture in the brick that leads to an infection.

Breach of Duty

The second element of negligence is the breach of duty by an individual defendant. The breach of duty must be proved in order to receive compensation for personal injury claims. A breach of duty occurs when the actions of the at-fault party are not in line with what an ordinary person would do under similar circumstances.

For instance, a physician has several professional duties to his patients based on the law of the state and licensing boards. Drivers have a duty to take care of other drivers as well as pedestrians, and to follow traffic laws. If a driver violates this duty and causes an accident is responsible for the injuries of the victim.

Lawyers can rely on the "reasonable person" standard to prove the existence of the duty of care and then prove that the defendant failed to meet that standard in his actions. The jury will decide if the defendant fulfilled or did not meet the standard.

The plaintiff must also establish that the defendant's breach of duty was the main cause of the injuries. It can be more difficult to prove this than a breach of duty. A defendant could have driven through a red light, but that's not what caused your bicycle accident. Causation is often contested in crash cases by defendants.

Causation

In motor vehicle legal vehicle cases, the plaintiff must establish a causal connection between the defendant's breach of duty and his or her injuries. For instance, if a plaintiff sustained neck injuries as a result of an accident that involved rear-ends, his or her lawyer might argue that the collision was the cause of the injury. Other elements that could have caused the collision, such as being in a stationary vehicle are not considered to be culpable and won't affect the jury's decision on the cause of the accident.

For psychological injuries, however, the link between an act of negligence and Motor Vehicle Case an injured plaintiff's symptoms may be more difficult to establish. The fact that the plaintiff had an uneasy childhood, a bad relationship with his or her parents, was a user of alcohol and drugs, or suffered previous unemployment may have some influence on the severity of the psychological problems he or is suffering from following an accident, however, the courts typically consider these factors as part of the context that led to the accident from which the plaintiff's injury resulted rather than an independent cause of the injuries.

It is crucial to consult an experienced attorney should you be involved in a serious motor vehicle accident. The attorneys at Arnold & Clifford, LLP, have extensive experience in representing clients in personal injury as well as commercial and business litigation, and motor vehicle crash cases. Our lawyers have developed working relationships with independent medical professionals across a variety of specialties including expert witnesses in accident reconstruction and computer simulations, and with private investigators.

Damages

The damages a plaintiff may recover in a motor vehicle case include both economic and non-economic damages. The first type of damages is all financial costs that can be easily added together and calculated into a total, for example, medical treatments as well as lost wages, repairs to property, and even the possibility of future financial losses, such as a diminished earning capacity.

New York law also recognizes the right to seek non-economic damages such as suffering and pain, as well as loss of enjoyment of life, which cannot be reduced to a monetary amount. However, these damages must be proven to exist using extensive evidence, such as deposition testimony of the plaintiff's close friends and family members medical records, as well as other expert witness testimony.

In cases where there are multiple defendants, Courts will often use the rules of comparative negligence to determine the percentage of damages awarded should be divided between them. The jury will determine the percentage of fault each defendant is accountable for the incident, and divide the total amount of damages awarded by the percentage. New York law however, does not allow for this. 1602 specifically exempts owners of vehicles from the comparative fault rule in relation to injuries sustained by the driver of the vehicles. The subsequent analysis of whether the presumption of permissive usage applies is complicated and typically only a clear proof that the owner explicitly denied permission to operate the car will be sufficient to overcome it.