Personal Injury

The strength of your case depends on a number of factors. Generally, most personal injury cases require you, the plaintiff, to prove each of the elements below:

1. Duty of Care: California law generally holds that a person or entity is liable for injuries caused by their failure to use ordinary care under the same circumstances. What exactly that standard is depends on the facts of each case, but it generally means what a reasonably prudent person would do under like circumstances. This applies equally to premises owners and operators.

2. Breach of duty: This occurs when the person or entity fails to meet the standard of care.

3. Causation: There must be a connection between the defendant’s breach and your injury. The breach must be a substantial factor – meaning more than a remote or trivial factor – in causing the harm you suffered.

4. Damages: You must have suffered harm as a result of the defendant’s negligent conduct

In some circumstances it may be easy to prove liability against a defendant, but difficult to show you have been harmed. Conversely, if you suffer a catastrophic injury where the damages are high in value, but it was due to a freak accident or a situation where it is difficult to prove negligence, that also may impact your ability to bring a successful case. Bottom line, it is important to speak to an experienced personal injury attorney to assess your situation. Our attorneys have multiple decades of combined experience in evaluating personal injury cases and can help assess your claim.

A personal injury case is a type of civil case. For a civil case, you have the burden of proving your case by a preponderance of the evidence. This means you must prove each element listed above on a more-likely-than-not basis. Civil cases have a lower burden of proof compared to criminal cases, which require the prosecution to prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

To satisfy the elements of a personal injury claim, it may require opinions from experts. Common examples include:

To establish liability

• An expert engineer to testify regarding applicable safety codes and the standard of care in a trip-and-fall case.

• An accident reconstructionist expert to establish how a collision occurred if the defendant driver disputes liability in a car accident case

To establish causation

• An expert neurologist to link a traumatic brain injury/concussion to the underlying accident as opposed to another cause

• An expert neuropsychologist to testify how a brain injury impacts your behavior, mood, and cognitive skills

• A biomechanical expert to explain how the impact between your vehicle and another vehicle caused your injuries in a car accident case

To establish damages

• An expert lifecare planner to determine the value of past and future medical care

• An expert economist to determine the present value of future economic damages

• A vocational expert to opine on lost earning capacity and future lost wages

Aside from expert witnesses, you may help prove your case with percipient or fact witnesses. For example, a bystander that witnessed a driver running a red light that caused an accident in which you were injured would be helpful to proving liability against the other driver. If your injuries have impacted the quality of your life, it may be helpful to have friends and family members testify to that effect based on their observations.

Damages generally consist of two main components:

1. Economic damages: Otherwise referred to as special damages or pocketbook damages, economic damages are damages that can be measured in an actual dollar amount. This may include past and future medical expenses and past and future loss of earnings.

2. Non-economic damages: Otherwise referred to as general damages, this includes pain and suffering, emotional distress, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, grief, anxiety, and humiliation. Non-economic damages are difficult to measure in terms of placing a dollar value on them, unlike for medical bills or lost wages, but are typically considered to be more valuable than economic damages.

Another type of damages is loss of consortium. In California, this remedy is available to the spouse of an injured party for loss of companionship, love, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, moral support, and enjoyment of sexual relations. It is limited to non-economic damages only.

In some instances, punitive damages may be available. These are damages designed to punish a defendant for egregious conduct and to deter such conduct from happening again. To get punitive damages, you have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant engaged in the underlying conduct with malice, oppression or fraud. This is a higher burden of proof than is otherwise required in a civil case, which usually makes punitive damages more difficult to obtain.

Malice means the defendant acted with intent to cause you injury or that the defendant’s conduct was despicable and done with a willful and knowing disregard of your rights or safety. A defendant acts with knowing disregard when it is aware of the probable dangerous consequences of its conduct and deliberately fails to avoid those consequences.

Oppression means that a defendant’s conduct was despicable and subjected you to cruel and unjust hardship in knowing disregard your rights. Despicable conduct is conduct that is so vile, base, or contemptible that it would be looked down on and despised by reasonable people.

Fraud means that a defendant intentionally mispresented or concealed a material fact and did so intending to harm you.

No two personal injury cases are the same. Thus, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to evaluating what a claim may be worth. There are many factors that go into evaluating a case, such as the nature of liability, whether there is a viable defendant with sufficient insurance coverage or assets, the severity of your injuries, and whether you’re likely to experience future symptoms. Even your age matters in terms of causation and future damages that may be available. As a result, it is important to contact an experienced California personal injury attorney to properly assess your claim. Our attorneys have multiple decades of combined experience in evaluating personal injury cases and can help determine the value of your claim.

California follows a comparative fault system, which means that your own negligence or fault will be taken into account when determining compensation. If you are found partially at fault for causing the underlying accident in which you were injured, your compensation may be reduced by your percentage of fault. The allocation of fault is determined by the jury if the case goes to trial.

Trials can be costly and lead to unpredictable results. Therefore, an overwhelming majority of cases resolve without ever going to trial. Whether your case has a chance to settle depends on the same factors in assessing what a case is worth. Keep in mind that in some instances a case may settle not because of its merit but because one, or both, side(s) do not want to incur significant costs going forward. Also, it may be more difficult to settle a case early on before both sides have had a chance to conduct discovery – i.e., the process by which parties have the opportunity to further investigate and assess liability and damages through document production and sworn testimony. Ultimately, there are a number of factors that play into whether a case will go to trial, which is why it is important to have experienced trial counsel representing you. We prepare every case as if it will go to trial and will aggressively litigate to maximize the value of your claim.

NO! We understand the financial strain that can come after an accident, which is why we generally take personal injury cases on a contingency fee basis. That means you will not have to pay us any upfront fees. You only pay us if we successfully obtain compensation for you, which is a percentage of the total recovery. If we do not obtain a recovery for you, you still will not owe us costs. This ensures that you can focus on your recovery without worrying about legal expenses.

In California, the statute of limitations to file a personal injury or wrongful death claim is generally two years from the date of injury or death. There are certain exceptions. For example:

• In a medical malpractice case, you must file the case within one year of discovering the injury or within three years of the date the injury occurred, whichever comes first.

• Minors have until two years after they turn 18 to file a personal claim.

• For certain toxic torts, such as asbestos, in which you may not get sick until years after exposure, the statute of limitations is one year from the date you suffered a disability or one year from when you knew or should have known that such disability was caused by such exposure.

Generally, it is not a good idea to speak with the opposing party’s insurance adjuster or to accept an early settlement offer. Insurance companies are for-profit entities and have an interest in making your claim go away for nothing or at a discounted rate. Consequently, their initial offer to you is likely well below the compensation you deserve. Further, insurance companies may try to get you to admit fault or make other statements against your interest to justify a lower settlement amount or to deny the claim altogether. Therefore, it is always important to consult with an experienced personal injury attorney before engaging with the other side’s insurance company. We are happy to discuss the facts of your case during a free consultation to help determine what your case may be worth and guide you through the process.

Our attorneys have decades of experience assisting clients in navigating their personal injury claims. Whether you have a traumatic brain injury from a car accident, have suffered catastrophic injuries from a defective product, or have a slip and fall claim against a business, our attorneys can help you determine your best options and next steps moving forward.