How Is Liability Determined in a Personal Injury Case?

If you’ve been injured by someone else’s negligence, you are entitled to bring a personal injury case with the help of a Columbia personal injury attorney. But the success of your case will depend on proving negligence on the part of the other person or entity, and this is required to show that they are liable. Here’s how that happens.

How Is Liability Determined in a Personal Injury Case?

In any personal injury case, you’ll hear the terms “negligent” and “liable” thrown around, so it makes sense to first understand what we’re talking about. Liability is legal responsibility that one person or entity has toward another, and this can manifest in all kinds of situations. For example, a company has an obligation to produce products that are safe when used in the intended way. A driver has an obligation to obey the rules of the road and drive only when competent to do so. A store owner has an obligation to keep the property safe from hazards and to warn visitors of any known hazards that can’t be immediately removed.

Negligence happens when a person or entity fails to meet their obligations. So, if a company makes a defective product and doesn’t take the necessary steps to discover and deal with this, they are negligent. If a driver speeds or drives drunk, they are negligent. If a store owner knows about a spill but doesn’t bother to clean it up or put out signs, they have acted negligently.

Steps to Proving Liability

Step 1: Prove “Duty of Care”

The first step in proving liability is to show that the other party actually did have a legal responsibility to you, or a “duty of care.” In some cases, this is simple. For example, if you were hit by a drunk driver, it’s pretty easy to demonstrate that they had a duty of care not to get behind the wheel while impaired. In other cases, this can be more difficult to prove. For example, if you were injured on someone else’s property, you’ll need to prove that you were not trespassing and also establish why you were there to understand the degree of responsibility the property owner had towards you.

The highest duty of care is owed towards commercial property owners who actively invite visitors to come to their property to engage in commerce, while the lowest duty of care would be owed to someone uninvited, but not trespassing, such as a political campaigner who chooses to come onto private property. Trespassers are owed no duty of care, though property owners may not injure them purposefully or create “traps” to harm them.

Step 2: Prove Breach of Duty of Care

Once you’ve shown that you were owed a duty of care by someone, your next step is to show that they failed in their duty: that they were negligent. So, for example, if you were injured in a wrong-site surgery, you may need to show that the hospital did not properly vet the surgeon who worked on you before hiring them or did not have proper protocols in place, and thus the hospital failed in its duty towards you. In a car accident, breach of duty can happen when a driver drives impaired, speeds, disobeys road rules, or drives while distracted. In a property accident case, you’ll need to show that the property owner knew or reasonably should have known about a hazard and did not take care of it.

This can be difficult at times. For example, if a store employee spilled a liquid and failed to clean it up, the property owner could likely be held liable for the actions of their employee if you slip on this liquid and are injured; however, if a customer spilled something and didn’t inform anyone, the question then becomes “when should the store reasonably have known about the spill?” You’ll have to show that enough time had passed that a responsible store would have discovered the spill and either marked it or cleaned it up.

Step 3: Prove the Breach Caused the Accident

Just because someone failed in their duty of care doesn’t actually mean that their breach caused the accident. For example, consider the following scenario: Driver A fails to yield right of way at a four-way stop and is hit by Driver B, who is drunk. Driver A is injured, but because Driver B was drunk, Driver A believes they should be held at fault.

However, while Driver B did fail in their duty of care, that failure was not actually the cause of the accident. and Driver A is actually liable or primarily liable. While Driver B may be criminally prosecuted for driving drunk, they would not be liable for Driver A’s injuries if their breach of duty of care didn’t actually cause the accident.

Step 4: Prove Damages

Once you’ve shown that someone had a duty of care to you, that they breached this duty, and that this breach caused an accident, you must next show that you were damaged. This is normally proven through presenting things like medical records and bills from your treatment, car insurance and mechanic’s bills for damage to a vehicle, etc. If you’ve been badly injured, you may also have quite a lot of peripheral expenses, such as for childcare if you were unable to watch your children yourself; Uber or taxi bills to and from medical appointments; lawn care or housekeeping services if you’re unable to do your normal chores due to injury; etc.

Note that Missouri does allow you to bring an action for pain and suffering damages, and there is no cap except in medical malpractice cases; however, you cannot bring a case just for pain and suffering. There must have been a verifiable injury for pain and suffering to be added on.

Step 5: Linking the Damages to the Accident

The final step is showing that the damages you’ve proved you’ve suffered were directly caused by the accident that resulted from the other party’s failure in duty of care. This is where you can expect some pushback.

For example, insurance companies may try to claim that some of your injuries weren’t from the accident; that they aren’t as bad as you claim; that you had a pre-existing condition which is the real cause of your injuries rather than the accident; or that you failed to mitigate the damage of your injuries (such as by not following doctor’s orders or by failing to get medical treatment promptly). It’s always important to get medical help as soon as possible after an accident to keep your case strong.

Working With a Columbia Personal Injury Attorney

As you can see, it’s not as simple to prove liability as you might think it would be. Victims who attempt to bring personal injury claims without legal help are always less successful and often see smaller settlements than those who get the help of an experienced personal injury lawyer. A lawyer will know how to find and use all the available evidence to convincingly prove liability: and to defend you against accusations of liability or attempts to minimize or deny your damages.

For experienced help with proving liability, contact the Wendt Law Firm P.C.
in Kansas City, Columbia, Camdenton, and the surrounding areas for a free case evaluation.