Personal Injury Legal Terms Important to Your Case
Personal injury attorneys like to use simple language when communicating to their clients. As such, during preliminary consultations, assess that your personal injury case lawyer converses with you in terms that ease to grasp. This guarantees that any inquiries you make regarding how to proceed will receive straightforward answers.
Legal Responsibility
In the context of a personal injury case, liability may be the outcome of being at-fault. But there are cases where the liable party may not necessarily be at fault, such as an employer when their employee suffers on-the-job injury. Fault or no fault, liability means legal responsibility for the settlement the injured person is seeking. It’s possible for personal injury liability to be shared among multiple parties, including the claimant. Generally speaking, the liable party must be identified so you can file your claims.
Contingency Charges
“Contingency fee basis” is part of the response you’ll get from your personal injury attorney concerning what they charge for their service. Under a contingency fee arrangement, an injured plaintiff is able to access legal service while pursing compensation including when, at the commencement of the case, they can’t afford a lawyer. If you’re the victim, you don’t have to pay in advance, committing instead to pay your attorney a percentage of the award you’ll receive if you win the case. Insist on this kind of payment plan from your attorney all the time you’re engaging them.
Understanding Damages
Damages and liability are in the same way critical to personal injury claims. Damages comprise the degree of injury the claimant has sustained, and are defined in monetary value. So, when your lawyer says you’re going to be awarded damages, they’re talking about the amount of money you’ll receive. However, damages must be linked to a specific form of loss or injury associated with the defendant’s liability.
There are three broad forms of damages that a victim may qualify for: punitive, quantifiable, and non-quantifiable. Punitive damages are awarded to the victim as a form of deterrence against serious misconduct on the part of the accused. Injury damages that you can’t quantify are those whose intensity or size you also can’t easily represent using numbers. A case in point is mental/physical turmoil and the loss of relationship capacity.
However, quantifiable damages are easy to work out and define their enormity. These payments usually form the bulk of the compensation amount you’ll receive. Costs for medication are typical such damages, so long as any present or future treatment is for the impact of the exact injuries. All missed salaries while undergoing treatment, and any lost capacity to work and get paid later on can also be measured.
Retain a personal injury attorney that’s clear in their vocabulary to help you make informed choices going forward.