If you are considering contacting a lawyer about a personal injury case, you should stop and think for a moment. Are you fairly sure that you have a case and you are going against the right person? Just because you may have been injured due to the negligence of someone else doesn’t necessarily mean you can sure they are liable. In order to find out, your case will need to meet specific criteria and you will need to prove legal liability. Here is some information on proving legal liability for personal injury in Cedar Rapids, IA.
Determine Legal Liability before Moving Ahead
In general, most accidents occur because at least one party involved was being careless. In a car accident, for example, one driver is usually more careless than the other, even though it is likely that both were careless in some way. When it comes to legal liability, the one who was more careless will have to pay at least a portion of damages for the less careless one. Legal liability almost always uses this rule along with one of the following rules:
* If the person who was injured was not where they were supposed to be, the person who caused an accident may not be held liable. This means, if you were riding a bike in an area that specifically says, “No Bicycles Allowed”, even if you get hit, the driver of the car may not be liable.
* If the injured party was found to be just as careless, even if one party caused the accident, neither may be liable. For example, if both of you were pulling out of a parking space at the same time and hit each other, neither would be liable, even if there was an injury.
* If one party caused an injury while working, the employer could actually be held liable instead of the person who caused the injury.
* If an accident occurred on dangerous property, the owner of the property would be liable over the person who may have caused the injury. For example, if you are at a house party and you are injured during a party prank causing the deck to break. The owner, not the prankster, would be held liable.
* If the injury is caused by a defective product, the manufacturer would be liable.
As you can see, there can really be a thin line between who can be held liable in an accident and who cannot. The best thing to do when trying to determine legal liability is to speak with a personal injury attorney in Cedar Rapids, IA if your case falls into any of these grey areas. You may find that you have a perfectly acceptable case against the person at fault. However, you may also find that you are barking up the wrong tree and legally, someone else is at fault altogether.
