What Is Negligence & How Can It Affect Wichita My Personal Injury Case?

Mann Wyatt Tanksley Injury Attorneys | August 1, 2019 | Personal Injury

If you’ve suffered a personal injury in Wichita, proving your injury happened as the result of negligence could make the difference between winning and losing your case. Online legal library, AllLaw.com, explains negligence as the legal concept that forms the framework of fault in most personal injury cases. Essentially, it is a failure to take reasonable care under the circumstances leading to an injury or harm to another person.

According to personal injury lawyer Jesse Tanksley of Mann Wyatt Tanksley Injury Attorneys, there are four criteria that must be met to prove negligence in a personal injury case.

1. Establish duty of care

“It’s a duty or obligation to do or not do something that could cause harm to someone else,” Tanksley said.

In legal terms, duty of care refers to the responsibility one person has to avoid causing harm to another. As the plaintiff, you would need to establish that the other involved party or parties had a duty of care in the situation in which your injury occurred.

2. A breach of the duty of care

Once you establish that the defendant had a duty of care, you must then show how they breached that duty by doing something they shouldn’t have done or by failing to do something they should have done. For instance, if a driver runs a red light, they are breaching the duty of care for their passengers, their fellow drivers, and potentially any pedestrians.

3. Causation

“If you can establish that the defendant breached the duty of care, you then have to prove that their actions led directly to the fourth criterion, injuries or damages,” Tanksley said.

4. Injuries or damages

Injuries are any physical harm caused as a direct result of the breach of the duty of care. Damages have a broader definition. They include any lasting mental or monetary effects occurring as a result of the breach of duty of care.

It’s vital to understand that all four criteria must be met in order to have a negligence case.

“If you don’t have causation, you don’t have a negligence case. If you don’t have damages, you don’t have a negligence case,” Tanksley explained.

This can seem like an incredibly daunting process, but you don’t have to do it alone. The experienced personal injury attorneys at Mann Wyatt Tanksley Injury Attorneys will work with you and make sure you build the strongest case possible to protect your rights.

Contact a Wichita Personal Injury Lawyer Immediately

If you’ve recently suffered a personal injury in the Wichita area, contact Mann Wyatt Tanksley Injury Attorneys to set up a free consultation today. With more than 75 years of combined litigation experience, we have helped clients receive the compensation they deserve for: