Tuesday, November 17, 2009

What is Personal Injury Law?

Each year thousands of people suffer serious personal injuries in a wide variety of accidents resulting in countless hours of lost productivity and wasted money. When an accident occurs, someone is usually at fault. Personal injury law is a subset of tort law that allows you to bring a lawsuit against the individual or entity responsible for the injury in order to recoup some of those losses.

Automobile Accident Injuries

By far, the largest number of personal injury claims is made by car accident victims. Each year there are more than 300,000 injuries sustained in auto accidents in the United States. The most serious of those accidents that result in the preponderance of lost personal productivity and wages are due to traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury. The costs of rehabilitation from those injuries are usually higher than is paid out by insurance. All too often the person who caused the accident is uninsured or under insured.

Slip and Fall Accidents

Another common category of accident are slip and fall or trip and fall accidents. These types of personal injury claims are filed against the owner of the premises who is liable for the injury. Whether the accident occurred on a construction site, a place of business, or a personal residence, the owner or tenant of that property is responsible to ensure reasonable safety for people on the premises.

Visitors in premises liability laws are defined in three categories: * Invited - This means that the person was invited, either, explicitly or implicitly onto the property to conduct business, such as a customer visiting a store. * Licensee - Social guests coming over to a personal residence are an example of a licensee. * Trespasser - This is someone who does not belong on the property. A trespasser may still have a claim in premises law if the owner did not take reasonable steps to ensure public safety.

Product Liability

Many injuries are caused by unsafe products. There are three different types of product defects that can cause personal injury.

* Design defect, the design of the product itself is flawed or dangerous. * Manufacturing defect, the product was assembled incorrectly, causing injury. * Marketing defect, improper warning labels, or instructions resulted in injury.

Liability for a defective product could lie anywhere along the chain from the manufacturer to the distributor of the product. Even resellers of defective products may be held liable under new laws overseen by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Medical Malpractice

A special subset of personal injury law pertains to medical malpractice. Some examples of medical malpractice include:

* Misdiagnosis, or failure to diagnose a serious medical condition * Delaying necessary care causing a worsened condition * Failure to treat an injury according to acceptable medical practice

The nation's medical abuses are kept in check by accurately prosecuting medical malpractice when personal injury occurs.


About the Author

To find personal injury lawyers in New York, please visit the website of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos P.C. to schedule an initial consultation.

Article Source:- GoArticle

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