Preparing the ground to prove defendant was at fault for the car accident 

Proving negligence is a prime requirement to establish a case for claiming compensation for accident victims. Car accident lawsuits revolve around proving the negligence of the offender that caused injuries to the victim and or damaged property. Negligence is hard to define, and only a personal injury attorney knows its legal interpretation and the ways to establish that the offending party was negligent. Although personal injury claim settlements often happen with the claim settlers of insurance companies and sometimes take the course of legal settlement, it is never easy to handle it on your own. Depending on legal professionals give claimants ample opportunity to get maximum compensation for claims. Having idea about what negligence means in legal parlance and how to prove it can help to envisage a favorable outcome of the case.

Negligence – what is it?

Carelessness or acting without application of mind is what one can term as negligence that results in injuring some other person or causing damage to property. When someone is negligent, it leads to that person doing something that he or she should not have done. On the contrary, failing to do something that the person should have done also amounts to negligence. If you fail to turn on the lights at night when driving it amounts to negligence just as inability to stop for a pedestrian.

The use of the word negligence is widespread in car accident cases. A driver is supposed to be careful to ensure that they do not hurt others (pedestrians, motorists or passengers) who they encounter on the road when driving.  If a driver is not careful enough and it results in injuring someone, the driver becomes liable for causing injuries to the victim.

What constitutes a negligence claim?

It is the responsibility of the plaintiff (the person who brings the lawsuit) to show that the offender or defendant was negligent. According to the law, you can establish the negligence of the defendant along with the following lines.

• Drivers must be careful – The law stipulates that drivers must be cautious when they come across any person on the road whether passenger, pedestrian or motorists. This constitutes the duty of reasonable care that rests on drivers.

• The defendant was not careful - In legal term, this is known as violating or breaching the duty of care. To judge if the driver was attentive enough, the legal professionals would compare the conduct of the driver with that of a reasonable person. The law tries to seek the answer to how a reasonable person would have behaved under similar circumstances. If the behavior of the defendant falls short of what a reasonable person would have done it amounts to a violation of reasonable care which is the duty of a driver.

• Injuries resulted from the conduct of the defendant – The plaintiff must establish with facts thatthe injuries happened only because of the defendant’s conduct.

In addition to the above, the plaintiff must be able to establish that suffering injuries and allied damages translate into monetary losses and emotional distress eligible for claiming compensation.