A personal injury claim is known to be a legal procedure that is used to recover financial compensation for an individual who has suffered from personal injury without any fault of his or her own.
Actually, a personal injury could be attributed to a psychological illness or injury or physical illness or injury. The term also covers a wide range of accident and injury types including deaths and diseases.
Personal Injury Claims and Their Types
There are mainly different types of personal injury claims especially those that arise from accidents at the place of work, accidents on a road, public places, trips and slips, foreign jurisdiction accidents and holidays, defective product claims, medical negligence claims and assaults.
In any of these categories, injuries could range from sprains, whiplash injuries to limb loss, severe spinal injuries and life-changing brain injuries that result in death.
Negligence
An individual could apply for personal injury claims if the injury is caused by someone else. The defendant individual or the organization is legally at fault if the accident or injury of a claimant is caused by the result of their negligence or by a breach of statutory duty. Negligence could also be simply defined as a behavior or conduct that falls under such a standard of care that a prudent person will usually exercise in the same circumstances.
Contributory negligence
Contributory negligence is a term used when a defendant accepts his or her responsibility on the accident of a claimant. Nevertheless, he or she alleges that the claimant was partly responsible in the injuries.
Allegations of contributory negligence are also common in claims of personal injury. If upheld in the courts, these could result to a reduction in the amount of compensation that a claimant ends up receive. This will also depend on the degree of fault that is attributed to them.
Among the most common examples consist of road traffic accidents wherein the claimants may be judged to be partially responsible for their injuries. This is also in the event that they have not been seen wearing a seatbelt during the time of the accident.
Who can claim?
If you mainly suffer from an accident or injury, you can be considered as the claimant. And then, you could claim on your own behalf. If ever the injured person is just below the age of eighteen, the courts will then appoint what is called as the ‘litigation friend’ to claim on behalf of the person. This will also be a guardian or a family member.
Also, the court will appoint a family member or a close friend as a Litigation Friend. This is also in the event that an injured person is not able to manage their own legal affairs.
If ever the injured person has died, the personal representatives or financial dependents can claim for the loss of dependency. One good example of which is that it could include a widow and her children who claim for loss of dependency that follows the death of a husband and father. This is also in the event that the father is the sole breadwinner of the family.