When you're wronged by another person which leads to injury or financial loss, you know that your legal right is to sue for damages. What you may not know is that the laws surrounding civil law which does not involve a contractual obligation are called tort law. Tort law defines legal injury and how someone can sue when a tort has been committed.
Injuries can be expensive and life-changing. When you're injured in a fall or any other kind of accident, you could be looking at steep medical bills, lost wages, and a long-term physical damage. Not only that, but an injury can put serious strain on your personal life. That's why we have tort law: to make sure that victims are able to get the money they deserve. Talking to a Tampa accident attorney can be the first step towards getting compensation for your injury.
What Exactly Is Tort Law?
Tort law falls under civil law, rather than a criminal law, and is defined by four elements:
Duty
Breach of duty
Causation
Injury
If these four elements have occurred, then your case will stand up in court. Only when all four of these elements are present in a case can personal injury be established. A Tampa accident attorney can help you know if you have all four aspects in your case.
If you're familiar with the term "duty" in a business context, you're probably used to it meaning an obligation, usually with a written contract. This is not the case in tort litigation, though. When it comes to torts, duty most often implies means an implied obligation based on safety and the unspoken rules of society. Personal injury law involves a belief that every member of society has a certain responsibility to behave in a manner that will not injure or damage others. Acting in a way that can cause injury is reckless and irresponsible.
Once it has been established that the person had a duty to act or behave in a certain way, it is necessary to prove that the person did act in a way that breached this duty. That is, that the person caused the injury through a failure to perform his or her duty. For example, a motorist's duty is to drive his or her car safely and carefully obeying all the rules of the road. Car accidents occur when that motorist does not live up to that duty. In cases involving property liability, the implied duty is to make sure the property is free from safety hazards, such as wet floors. When a customer slips on that wet and improperly maintained floor, the owner of the property has violated his or her duty to provide a safe shop.
The next thing that must be proved in a tort case is causation, which means that the particular breach of duty in question caused the injury to the victim. If the injury was not, in fact, caused by the breach of duty, a tort has not been committed. It's important to realize, however, that causation doesn't have to be immediate or direct; rather, the breach of duty must broadly have led to personal injury. If the defendant's breach of duty led eventually to the plaintiff's injury, the case may be valid. A Tampa accident attorney can help you determine if you were indeed injured as a result of someone's breach of duty.
The last piece of the puzzle is probably the one that sounds the most obvious: the proof of injury. The plaintiff must be able to prove that he or she was injured, either in a physical or financial sense. Depending on the case, the injury itself may be abstract: mental trauma, emotional distress, and pain and suffering have all been cited as types of injuries in past tort cases.
If all of these elements are present in your case, you deserve your day in court. Discussing your case with a Tampa accident attorney may be the first step you take to getting the financial compensation owed you because of your injury. To learn more, visit www.beltzandruth.com.
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