After being injured in an accident by the carelessness or mal-intent of another, many victims are legally entitled to some degree of reimbursement or compensation for their losses.
These losses include damages like lost wages, medical expenses, hospital bills, prolonged rehabilitation, mental trauma, pain, suffering, property damages, and more.
In extreme cases where the wrong-doer demonstrated egregious misconduct or caused such trauma that compensation is not a sufficient means of amends, punitive damages may also be awarded by a court.
Although a victim of a negligent act or accident is truly a victim and should be compensated for their damages, pursuing a lawsuit for such restitution may not always be in the victim's best interest.
Most often, a personal injury lawsuit is the path wrongly injured victims should take, but in some instances, it may not be the best option for a number of reasons.
For this reason, it is wise to consider whether or not a lawsuit is a worthwhile endeavor.
Continue reading to learn a few considerations that can help a personal injury victim decide if a lawsuit is the productive course of action to take after being hurt in an accident.
Aspects of the Accident After being injured in an accident at the expense of another person or entity, it is important to indicate three aspects of the incident.
First, it is critical to consider the actual level of fault of the opposing party.
What was their role in the incident? Did they have a legal duty of care to prevent such accidents from happening to the same class of people as the victim? Would a reasonable person have foreseen the possibility of the accident happening? Did they take reasonable action to prevent such accidents? There is much more to determining fault in a personal injury case, but these are a few inquiries that come into play when assessing liability.
Sometimes it can seem like an accident was the other person or company's fault, when in fact, they are cleared of such liability for several other reasons.
If a person does not have a strong enough claim against an opposing party, or if the opposing party is not entirely at-fault, there may be no point to a personal injury lawsuit.
It is also important to consider the victim's own liability in the accident.
What was their level of fault? Could they have prevented their injuries? Should they have reasonably seen that such accidents could happen? For example, it is a wet and rainy day and a woman walks into a grocery store wearing 3" high heels.
Although there are wet floor signs posted everywhere, she ignores them and soon after, slips and falls, injuring herself badly.
Since a reasonable person would not wear inappropriate shoes on a slippery day, and would know that floors will be wet on a rainy day; and since the grocery store took reasonable action to post "wet floor" signs as a warning to customers, the level of fault would fall onto the woman herself.
In this case, the store would not be held liable for her injuries and would be cleared of any responsibility for the accident.
A personal injury lawsuit would be fruitless in this example.
And the third aspect to consider is the severity of the victim's injury.
If the injury is not so serious that it diminished their quality of life in some way, it may not be an injury worth suing over.
For example, if a person visits another person's home and is greeted by a hyper-active dog that accidentally scratches their arm, that person might not have the best luck pursuing an injury claim against the owner of the dog.
This is because the injury was not serious and did not affect their quality of life.
Had the dog bit the visitor, resulting in a wound that required stitches or surgery, the circumstance would change and a claim could be valid.
Possibility of Compensation Aside from the three aspects of the accident, it is important to think about the possibility of compensation.
Although a court can rule that a victim is owed compensation, the court is not the one to pay it, and neither is the government.
All compensation that is court- ordered to the victim or their families has to come from the defendants own pocket, or from the defendant's insurance company.
If a defendant has no insurance, and has very little assets, income, or savings, there is no way to actually get the compensation.
They cannot pay.
For this reason, pursuing a lawsuit would be pointless.