When thinking about legal career specialties, the first thing that comes to mind for many people is a criminal attorney – a lawyer who defends the accused or prosecutes him/her. Criminal Law has always been the aspect of law that garnered the most attention. But for current and future law students, there are dozens of other interesting practice areas to consider (like banking, corporate, transactional, bankruptcy, just to name a few). And for those interested in civil litigation, there is also a wide range of specialties, everything from personal injury law to complex environmental litigation. So, what exactly is personal injury law?
You’ve seen the movie: the courtroom scene where the plaintiff shows up with a neck brace, taking the witness stand to testify against the evildoer who caused their pain. In real life, this type of lawsuit is called a personal injury action. Personal injury claims are the basis for civil lawsuits (or actions) between two people (or parties). Usually, a party brings the lawsuit against someone who has wronged or injured them in some way. Ultimately, the goal of the lawsuit is to receive money to compensate them for the way in which they were wronged or injured. Are you in need of a personal injury lawyer but are not sure on where to look? Then it may be worth finding out how to find a personal injury lawyer in your area just in case you need one in the future. And the only way people will be able to contact this type of lawyer is if trainee lawyers decide to go into this field. So why might people need a personal injury lawyer? Here are the five most common types of personal injury claims.
1. Automobile Related Injuries
Personal injury attorneys will tell you that most of the cases they see are traffic related. Ranging from collisions to pedestrian incidents, cars cause the most legal disputes of this type. Reading from Arkansas? To learn more about automobile-related personal injury cases, try searching online for ‘Mark Rees Law firm accident attorney‘.
2. Property Damage
Remember those games of catch when you were a kid? Did you accidentally break a window? If so, and you managed not to get sued by your angry neighbor, consider yourself lucky. You dodged the bullet known as a property damage suit. Anything from that bungled pitch to bringing your pet bull into a china shop, with this claim, if you break it, you bought it.
3. Malpractice
Any licensed professional can be sued under this claim. However, the two most targeted professions are doctors and attorneys. Some states even have specific laws dealing with this issue as it affects doctors and attorneys, and there are many firms that specialize in providing people with a medical malpractice lawyer. Malpractice means that the injured person trusted the professional to perform their job correctly, and the professional failed to do so.
4. Slips, Trips, and Falls
Here’s another well publicized personal injury claim: injury to someone’s body. Examples of this type of claim are slipping on a spill in the grocery store floor, injuries sustained in a bar fight, or falling down the stairs.
5. Defective Products
Bringing up the rear is the personal injury claim for defective products. These types of claims are the reason for warning labels on products. Next time you see a warning label, you can thank personal injury attorneys for keeping you aware of any way in which this product has caused damage previously. When a product injures a person while the person was using the product in a reasonable way, a defective product claim emerges.
This guest post is authored by Jeremy Danielson, a personal injury attorney, with a practice in Atlanta, Georgia.