Sacramento Personal Injury Lawyers

In order to file a personal injury case for negligence, you must meet the four following criteria:

• Duty – In order to successfully bring a case against a defendant, the plaintiff must show that the law imposed a “duty” on the defendant to act a certain way. This “duty” is an obligation to act as a “reasonable person” would act, and courts have illustrated how a “reasonable person” would act in a variety of specific circumstances. For example, a manufacturer of a product has a “duty” not to release products that can foreseeably cause harm to consumers.
• Breach – This requirement simply means that a defendant must have failed to act as a reasonable person would have acted in his or her circumstances, and thereby breached his or her duty.
• Harm – This requirement merely means that the plaintiff must have suffered some kind of real harm, physical, financial, emotional, etc.
• Causation – This requirement means that a defendant’s breach of duty must have caused the plaintiff harm. There are two types of causation that typically must be shown: 1) actual causation, meaning that, but for the defendant’s breach, the plaintiff’s harm would not have occurred, and 2) proximate causation, meaning that the link between the defendant’s breach and the plaintiff’s harm must not be ‘stretched too thin’ by intervening events or other factors.

To fully understand your rights after suffering an injury, contact Kershaw, Cook & Talley at (916) 520-6639. Our Sacramento personal injury attorneys can provide you with a free case evaluation.

Personal injury lawsuits provide a way for victims of preventable accidents to recover compensation for damages like medical bills, lost wages, property damage, and more. In order to be successful, the plaintiff (the injured person bringing the lawsuit) needs to prove that the actions or inaction of the defendant (the person accused of negligence) were to blame for their accident.

It is important to contact a Sacramento personal injury attorney you can trust as soon as possible after an accident. Before you call, make sure that you have gathered as much evidence as possible so that your attorney can begin building your case.

Here’s what you should do after an accident in order to support your personal injury claim:

• Take notes. The best way to remember the important details after suffering an injury is to write down anything you can remember about what occurred, when it occurred, and how it occurred.
• Write down the information of any witnesses. It is important to gather contact information from witnesses who saw you get hurt or anyone involved in the incident that led to your injury.
• Take photos or videos. Taking photos or videos of the scene can be invaluable - if you can do so safely, take pictures of your surroundings, any property damage, and any visible injuries.
• Seek medical attention. Be sure to visit your doctor promptly after an accident, even if you don’t immediately feel hurt. Any significant delay in treatment can not only hinder your physical recovery, but your legal recovery as well, as it could suggest that you aren't really as injured as you claim.
• Follow your doctors’ advice. If you don’t follow your doctor’s instructions, this may be misconstrued by an insurance company as negligence on your part, which may jeopardize your claim.
• Contact an attorney. It’s important to contact an experienced attorney immediately. An attorney can evaluate your case, protect your rights, help gather facts and evidence, take away the stress of dealing with insurance companies, and present the claim in an organized and persuasive manner to maximize your recovery. If necessary, your attorney can file a lawsuit on your behalf and litigate the case all the way through trial if that’s what justice requires.

Personal injury cases are legal disputes resolved through civil litigation. Unlike criminal cases, where the State seeks criminal sanctions against an individual, civil litigation consists of parties seeking some type of monetary damage or other specific result. Civil cases deal with a wide variety of laws including contract, tort, and property law. They are either filed as limited cases, where a plaintiff seeks damages of $25,000 or less, or unlimited cases where a plaintiff seeks damages of over $25,000.

The majority of civil cases filed are personal injury tort cases where a plaintiff is seeking monetary damages for an injury sustained by another person’s negligence. These lawsuits are brought for various reasons, such as motor vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, or defective products.

Many civil cases can be resolved without going to trial through an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process, such as arbitration or mediation. Arbitration and mediation bring together the persons involved in the lawsuit in an informal setting. The goal is to reach a fair resolution without incurring the time and expense of trial.

While there is no exact national data, the U.S. Department of Justice reports about 4% of all personal injury cases filed nationally actually go to trial. The majority of personal injury cases are resolved in either settlements or dismissals before trial is even assigned.

In states that recognize the “pure comparative fault” rule, injured parties may recover damages even if they were 99% at fault. Under this rule, the plaintiff's recoverable damages are proportionally reduced by the percentage they are at fault. So, if you were 70% at fault in a crash and suffered $100,000 in damages, you could still recover $30,000 from the other driver. Approximately 1/3 of states have adopted pure comparative fault—including California.