Savannah Personal Injury Lawyer
When you or a family member suffer from a personal injury, the focus of daily life suddenly shifts to dealing with the impacts of the injury. Between doctor visits, pain medication, and new adaptations to your routine, even the short-term consequences can be overwhelming, let alone any associated long-term effects.
The last thing you may want to think about at a time like this is money, but with mounting bills and time off from work to recover, the worries often prey on many injury victims’ minds. Potentially even more disconcerting are phone calls from lawyers and insurance companies asking questions, demanding statements, and pressuring you to accept a quick settlement.
Fortunately, help is available. When you work with a skilled Savannah personal injury lawyer, you could have a dedicated ally on your side to answer questions on your behalf and evaluate any settlement offers to make sure you are receiving the full amount to which you are entitled. If you were hurt because of someone else’s negligence, an experienced personal injury attorney could begin collecting evidence right away to build the strongest possible case for compensation.
Assigning Responsibility for a Personal Injury
Many times, when a person suffers an injury, the incident causing the injury could have been prevented if someone had only taken proper precautions. When someone fails to exercise the proper care and another person suffers injury as a result, the responsible party or his or her insurer may be required to pay compensatory damages to the individual harmed as a result. This can be referred to as actionable negligence.
In personal injury cases in Savannah that are based on claims of legal negligence, injured parties must prove another party was, in fact, negligent in order to collect damages. This involves proving that the party in question had a duty of care to protect other people from harm within their reasonable means, that they failed to uphold this duty in a way that directly caused injuries to someone else, and that those injuries are both physical and compensable in nature. A qualified Savannah personal injury lawyer could provide further clarification on how to prove legal negligence in an individual injury victim’s case.
When More Than One Person is To Blame
In many situations, more than one party may bear responsibility for an incident that leads to injury. For instance, a pedestrian hit by car may be held 10 percent responsible for the accident in court because they stepped outside the crosswalk before being struck, while the driver is held 90 percent responsible for speeding through an intersection.
O.C.G.A. §51-11-7 specifies that someone filing a personal injury suit in Georgia contributed to causing their own injury, they still may be entitled to recover damages if they could not have avoided the consequences of the other party’s negligence by exercising “ordinary care.”
In general, this means that if the injured person is less than 50 percent at fault for the incident, that person is entitled to recover, albeit with a deduction from their recoverable damages equivalent to their personal degree of fault. So, in the pedestrian accident described above, the injured party’s final damage award would be decreased by 10 percent to account for their comparative negligence.
Speaking with a Savannah Personal Injury Attorney
Those suffering injuries in Savannah may be entitled to receive money to cover expenses such as medical bills and wages lost due to missed work. Compensation may also be available for other consequences of a personal injury such as pain, suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment, and other issues. For a free review of your case, contact a skilled Savannah personal injury lawyer today.
