Your personal injury lawyer will tell you that you must establish that the defendant failed to act towards you with a certain standard of duty of care if you want to win a settlement from him or her. However, you must understand what a duty of care is before you can do that.
Personal injury lawyers in Los Gatos know that personal injury accidents happen all of the time. People who get hurt in them are always filing personal injury claims or cases. They win a settlement only if they can prove that the other party breached his or her duty of care towards them.
This must occur because of the concept of negligence. This concept establishes that fault is indeed present in a personal injury case. If you are the plaintiff, you must prove that the other party neglected his or her duty of care towards you and it was that breach which caused your personal injuries.
How is duty of care defined?
Your personal injury lawyer will tell you that the duty of care is the legal duty that everyone in society has to act in a reasonably careful way to avoid injuring others. When you drive, you have a duty of care towards others. You exercise this by following all traffic rules. If someone hits you by running a red light, that person has breached his or her duty of care.
Keep in mind that you and your personal injury lawyer may have difficulty establishing a duty of care relationship if your car accident occurred if the other driver had dysfunctional brakes which didn’t work and he or she hit your car as a result.
Duty of care and the ‘special relationship”
Sometimes, the duty of care rule is even more stringent. This is the case with airline pilots and commercial bus drivers. They have to be extra careful when driving or flying because of the many lives that they are safeguarding. Doctors are held to this heightened standard of duty of care because they save lives and heal people.
Did you know that businesses and other organizations also have a duty of care?
Businesses also have a duty of care which they must exercise in regards to the general public. For example, stores that sell weed killers have a duty of care to protect their buyers by selling products that are safe for people. They must place easy to read and see warnings if this is not the case.
Duty of care determines negligence
Your personal injury lawyer will tell you that you don’t have a personal injury case or lawsuit if you can’t establish that the other party had the responsibility to act towards you with a certain duty of care that was breached.