If you've suffered a personal injury as a result of another person's negligence, you need to know that the greatest chance you have of being awarded the maximum compensation for your trauma is by seeking professional legal representation.
Our team of New Jersey personal injury attorneys have been fighting on behalf of injury victims for decades. They know the strategies that get insurance companies to pay more, and they can do the same for you. If you're considering legal proceedings after an injury, contact our team today to learn more about your options.
Receiving compensation from an insurance company after suffering an injury is not particularly difficult. In fact, most insurance providers will gladly send you an offer for a minimal amount and then hope that you won't seek legal advice.
On the other hand, getting the insurance company to pay out the full financial award based on the damages that you suffered is quite difficult. When a maximum claim is the goal, then seeking out an experimented legal team is one of the best decisions you can make.
So, how do our legal representatives achieve substantial monetary awards for their clients? It all comes down to the legal arguments that they employ when negotiating with the 'other side'. Below, we delve deeper into what some of these are.
The concept of negligence is the most basic legal argument in a majority of injury claims. It speaks to the responsibility that a defendant may have had to avoid causing damages to the victim. This responsibility, or "duty of care," need not be established in a physical contract to exist; in fact, in a lot of situations, a duty of care is almost implicit.
For instance, the owner of a grocery store has a certain level of duty to protect their patrons. If there are liquid spills on the property, these should be cleaned up so as to avoid someone slipping and falling on them. Similarly, if the area in which the store is located has seen an increase in violent crimes over the past months, the owner should take measures to improve the security on their property and therefore better protect their customers.
If a defendant is found to be negligent, the plaintiff will likely be awarded compensation by a court.
Recklessness or reckless conduct is widely considered as being a step above negligence given that it factors in some level of intent.
With negligence, the offender may not have realized that the duty of care existed. In the case of recklessness, the offender (often the defendant) took additional risks that they should have known could increase the chances of other individuals being harmed.
Reckless conduct can be difficult to comprehend, though there are some explicit examples that help explain the concept.
Individuals who consume alcohol above the legal driving limit and then cause a wreck that produces injuries or even death are often found guilty of recklessness. This is due to the fact that they knew drinking and driving was illegal but committed the crime anyway. This is different to a driver who may have caused a similarly tragic car crash simply because they were distracted.
The distinction between gross negligence and recklessness can be quite small and subjective. Nevertheless, the amount of compensation that an injury victim can receive will differ based on the level of negligence that is attributed to an alleged offender.
As compared to recklessness, a person who is found to be guilty of gross negligence is one who took unreasonable risks that resulted in harm to the victim. More specifically, it could not be proven that the offender understood the risks. Rather, they are found to have acted with extreme disregard yet not willful intent.'
In cases involving gross negligence or recklessness, punitive damages may be awarded in addition to the compensation that negligence by itself could have permitted. Whenever it is feasible or applicable, a legal representative will try to prove either of these so as to obtain a larger monetary award for their clients.
As the term itself suggests, intentional misconduct deals with circumstances in which an offender expressed wholehearted intention to produce harm in another. Given that personal trauma claims often deal with accidents, intentional misconduct is not commonly pursued.
Two of the clearest examples of intentional misconduct are assault and battery. In both of these, and for whatever reason, an offender actively intended to cause harm to another person. The representative of an offender alleged to have committed intentional misconduct may argue that their client acted in self-defense, for example. Due to their nature, intentional misconduct claims can often be accompanied by criminal charges, though it is important to state that criminal and civil matters are completely separate legal processes.
This page was intended to outline some of the most powerful legal arguments that can be made on behalf of injury victims. However, there are many other factors to consider when presenting your claim. Contact our legal team today via the form on this page or by phone to discuss all of the elements that could help your claim be successful.
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