Before you can receive a fair personal injury settlement or favorable court award after a personal injury lawsuit, you need to be able to prove that the other party is legally responsible for the underlying accident. Let's look at why fault matters and how it's typically established in a personal injury claim.
Why Fault Matters in a Personal Injury Case
In the typical personal injury case, the injured person, who is known as the "plaintiff", suffers some form of harm as the result of the wrongful or "tortious" (typically that means "careless" or "negligent") conduct of the wrongdoer, who is known as the "defendant."
In order to prevail in most personal injury cases, the plaintiff must establish the defendant's negligence in connection with the underlying accident. That means showing:
- that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care to act in a certain manner
- that the defendant breached the duty of care through his or her actions (or through a failure to act)
- that the defendant's breach of duty proximately caused the plaintiff injury of some kind, and
- that the injury suffered is compensable under the law.
When a plaintiff meets the burden of proof as to the first two elements (establishing the existence of a legal duty of care, and proving the breach of that duty), he or she has proved the essential requirement of "fault," and is usually entitled to recover compensation for any losses (damages) resulting from the defendant's negligent conduct. That's why being able to prove fault is essential to your injury claim.
Negligence and the "Common Law"
As a general rule, we all owe one another a duty to act with reasonable care in our daily activities -- driving, walking, maintaining our property, controlling our dogs -- and when we act unreasonably, in a manner that causes harm to someone else, we can be held legally responsible for their resulting injuries.
In order to prove a breach of the duty of reasonable care, a plaintiff will typically rely on "common law" negligence, an expansive set of rules derived from the body of case law decided by the courts over the years, especially those rules that put "reasonable care" into specific contexts applicable to specific kinds of situations.
For example, if a tenant is injured as the result of a slip and fall on uneven pavement in a building's parking lot, the parties might look to case law to determine the landlord's liability, or fault, in connection with the condition that caused the fall. This case law might contain a "two-inch rule" which says that a landlord is only liable for a tenant's injuries sustained in a fall on pavement where surface unevenness is two inches or greater. So, the landlord might not be legally at fault for the tenant's fall if the pavement rose or fell only one inch, even though the landlord can be shown to have neglected this condition for years.
In this example, even though the landlord's neglect was arguably unreasonable, the existence of the common law standard of unreasonableness -- as set forth in the "two-inch rule" -- likely precludes the plaintiff from arguing that the landlord breached its duty of reasonable care, and the case might be dismissed.
Negligence and Statutory Fault
In other cases, the duty of reasonable care can be established by:
- finding a statute that requires people to behave in a certain way
- showing that the defendant violated the statute, and
- arguing that violation of the statute amounts to a clear breach of the duty of reasonable care.
This approach to proving fault is commonly employed in car accident cases where the defendant has run a stop sign, failed to stop in the assured clear distance ahead, or driven in excess of the speed limit. In these circumstances, the defendant's conduct will typically be in violation of the state's motor vehicle code, and in many states the violation of a statute constitutes negligence (or, at a minimum, a rebuttable presumption of negligence).
So, if the plaintiff can demonstrate through the testimony of eyewitnesses or other evidence (like a police report) that the defendant engaged in conduct that violated the motor vehicle code, and that his or her conduct proximately caused injuries related to the accident, proof of fault will be established.
Proving Fault Through Expert Witness Testimony
Some personal injury cases, such as those stemming from medical malpractice, require proof of fault from an expert witness.
For example, it is is not enough to show that the plaintiff went in for a routine surgical procedure and came out paralyzed from the waist down; while it may seem obvious to some that the defendant surgeon must have been at fault for this unfortunate outcome, courts almost always require the plaintiff to establish the applicable medical standard of care -- and the breach of that standard of care -- through the testimony of an expert witness who is familiar with the type of medical procedure at issue.
And, even when the plaintiff offers expert testimony that would seem to establish medical malpractice, the doctor will almost always introduce testimony from his or her own expert who will say that there was no breach of the standard of care. As you can see, proving fault in a medical malpractice case is especially difficult.
Get Help Proving Fault
Especially in cases involving serious injury, or those that will require the testimony of a qualified expert, it's usually a good idea to enlist the assistance of a personal injury attorney. While terms like "common law negligence" and "rebuttable presumption" might sound foreign to you, an experienced attorney will be well-versed in these concepts, and will know how to most effectively establish the other party's liability for your accident, to ensure the best outcome to your injury case.