What is Personal Injury?

Personal injuries happen when someone sustains harm resulting from the negligent or willful behavior of another. The law regards reckless people and entities responsible for their actions, allowing those whom are injured to recover damages that resulted from the accident.

Victims of personal injury can generally recover compensation the following:

• Lost wages
• Medical bills
• Prescription drug costs
• Pain and suffering
• Loss of potential future income
• Rehabilitation costs

In most cases, in order to collect on an injury claim in Massachusetts, you must prove the person who caused the injury was "negligent" – they did not exercise reasonable care. In Massachusetts, you must prove:

• The existence of a duty owed to you by the person who caused your injury
• The other person failed to carry out the duty that they owed you
• You suffered damages
• The other person's failure caused you to have the injury

Massachusetts "comparative negligence" law allows you to recover against another person, even if you were also negligent, as long as the other person was more negligent than you. The amount of your recovery will be reduced by a percentage of the amount you were found to be at fault for your own injury. If more than one person was negligent towards you, they are each proportionally responsible to you for their share of the damage that they caused.

If you have been injured using a consumer product, the manufacturer or the seller of the product may be responsible under a "products liability" legal theory if the product was not reasonably safe for use by you. Under Massachusetts law, you would need to prove that:

• The product had some sort of defect or it did not have adequate warnings
• The defect or lack of warnings caused your injury
• You suffered damages

Victims that are not aware of how much their claim is really worth may be inclined to accept a lower offer from an insurance company than could have been obtained from a skilled personal injury attorney. Many people worry that the cost to hire a lawyer for a personal injury claim will be too much. At DiBella Law offices, P.C. you won't pay a penny until and unless your case is won!

Personal injury lawsuits are filed by a victim of a tort (or their representatives) against a negligent party in order to seek compensation for damages suffered. Personal injury lawsuits can be brought against a party for negligence (e.g., causing a car accident by failing to obey traffic rules), strict liability (e.g., liability for making and selling defective products, or intentional wrongs (e.g., intentionally striking a person). Negligent torts occur when the defendant's actions were unreasonably dangerous. Strict liability wrongs do not depend on the degree of carefulness by the defendant, but are established when a particular action causes damage. Intentional torts are those wrongs which the defendant knew or should have known would occur through their actions or inactions. Examples of common legal actions which may be filed include liability for car accidents, workplace injury, drug injury, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse, slip and fall injury, exposure to toxic materials, dog bite injury, wrongful death as well as additional personal and commercial causes of action. If personal injury caused death, lawsuits can be filed by a decedent's beneficiaries or dependants in order to seek compensation for damages.

A personal injury attorney can file a claim for any kind of bodily injury, sickness, disease, or death sustained by any person and caused by an occurrence for which another party may be held liable. The first step in a possible personal injury claim is to assess whether the person who you are claiming is at fault is truly legally responsible for your injuries. Then you should analyze whether or not the damages you are claiming truly reflect the extent of your injuries or losses. The types of damages the injured party may recover include: loss of wages and earning capacity, pain and suffering, disfigurement, loss of consortium, reasonable medical expenses and other economic and non–economic damages. These damages include both present and future expected losses. If both of the above conditions are satisfied, you may have a personal injury case.

In Massachusetts, you only have three years to file a lawsuit against the person who injured you. If your lawyer has not been able to come to an agreement with any involved insurance companies, you will definitely want to file a lawsuit before the three–year statute of limitations runs out. In many states, a statue of limitations controls the amount of time a person has to file a claim. A personal injury attorney should be contacted early on in the process. Our firm's experienced attorneys will be able to answer your questions and provide the guidance you need in a complicated situation like this.

DiBella Law Office, P.C. attorneys have represented many people in complex personal injury actions including, but not limited to, wrongful death, commercial fraud, premises liability and catastrophic automobile accident actions. Our goal is to obtain a fair and just result for our clients. We look forward to putting our injury lawyers' experience to work for you.