Your personal injury lawyer will tell you that you must understand the duty of care and how it applies to personal injury cases if you want to have a chance at winning a settlement for your personal injury claim/case. Duty of care is what makes the difference between you ending up with nothing and/or ending up with a seven-figure settlement for your personal injury case. This is because duty of care is one of the key factors which determines if the defendant acted in a negligent manner towards you!

A lawyer would say that a person who ran a red light and broke your foot in the process is negligent because he or she failed to act with a reasonable duty of care which was to follow all traffic laws in this instance. You would definitely be eligible to pursue a settlement from that person in this instance.

What is the duty of care?

Personal injury lawyers in Baldwin Park know that people in society, in general, have a duty of care to act in an appropriate manner to keep from injuring others unnecessarily. When the courts or an insurance company determines if the duty of care has been breached in a particular instance, they look at the actions that a reasonable and normal person in the same situation would have taken. The defendant if said to be guilty of a breach of duty of care if the actions don’t match in the comparative analysis.

Just remember that the defendant may be acquitted from his or her duty of care even if it’s obvious that his or her actions caused your personal injury accident and related injuries. A good example of this is if the defendant was driving a car with faulty brakes.

Special relationship and duty of care

Some people are held to higher standards of duty of care because of their roles in society. This is true of airline pilots and doctors largely because of the nature of their work. The work that they do is risky and can put the lives and welfare of many people at stake. These professionals are held accountable by certain standards in their professions. You’ll generally need to have testimony from witness experts if you want to prove that one of these professionals is guilty of breaching his or her duty of care towards you because of the complex and specialized nature of the work involved.

About businesses and other organizations

Personal injury lawyers know that organizations that the public accesses like grocery stores are held to a higher duty of care. For example, if you were to slip and fall on a jar of spilled and broken baby food on the floor at your local Kroger, and you broke your leg, you’d definitely have a personal injury case on your hands which you could win a handsome settlement for. You can indeed bring personal injury law on your side provided you hire a good personal injury lawyer and fully understand the concepts discussed in this article. You can discuss the concepts in this article in more detail with your lawyer to understand them better.