Houston Personal Injury Legal Advice

Online Houston Personal Injury Legal Advice That You Should Know and Can Use

Almost anyone who has been injured by somebody else has questions about their legal situation. If you’ve been injured in an accident in or around Houston, free online personal injury legal advice may be easy to come by, but it isn’t always the answer to your specific problems.

Usually, nine times out of ten, “free can be worth the price you pay for it.” So, while many people try to seek out free Houston personal injury legal advice from websites or discussion boards, the truth is that no website can provide a comprehensive assessment of your legal unique situation.

Each personal injury case is different. You need an experienced attorney to determine the specifics of your situation and render an opinion that is right for you and your individual case. That’s why free web legal resources usually warn you against relying solely on the advice they give and suggest that you consult with a licensed attorney before you do anything that might endanger your case.

This article is not meant as a substitute for competent legal counsel, but it is intended to help you learn a little more about the basics of Texas personal injury law and understand some of the terminology so you can be in a better position to make an informed opinion once you do speak with a lawyer. To truly understand your legal situation, a website is not enough. This is why we strongly urge you to call us at 1-855-392-0000 (toll free) for a free, personalized assessment of your legal predicament.

What is a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

According to the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code (the rules that govern civil law in Texas), a personal injury is a type of injury that occurs “as a result of the actions or inaction of another person or entity.” Personal injuries include physical injuries and the emotional suffering that those injuries cause. In a personal injury lawsuit, the victim is called the plaintiff and the party that caused the injury is the defendant.

One of the most basic concepts that many don’t fully understand about personal injury lawsuits is that the victim is not uniformly entitled to collect money from the defendant just because the defendant has injured the victim. It’s just not that simple. Rare is the personal injury lawsuit that ends up being an open-and-shut case.

In fact, the scales of justice are often tilted in favor of the defendant and the law presumes that he owes the victim nothing. The only way to recover what you deserve for your injuries is to gather sufficient evidence and present it persuasively enough to tip the scales of justice in your favor. This is called “burden of proof,” which is always on the victim/plaintiff. In every instance, your evidence must demonstrate that the defendant was clearly negligent, that the defendant was the direct or proximate cause of your injuries, and that you are entitled to damages. If you fail to accomplish even one of these important tasks, the law won’t allow you to recover fair compensation for your injuries.

Why File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

Personal injury lawsuits have two purposes. The first is to secure a fair opportunity to receive reimbursement for your losses. In many cases, no amount of money can truly compensate a victim and his or her family for the physical and emotional aftermath of an accident. Because they have suffered a personal injury, victims typically incur very large medical bills and repair bills for damage to their property. Often, they must take time off from work to recuperate from their injuries. Suing those responsible for your injuries allows you to win the money you need to get back on your feet. In addition to medical bills and property loss, lost wages, reduced long-term earning capacity, pain and suffering, and other expenses caused by an accident due to the defendant’s negligence may all be reimbursed through a personal injury lawsuit.

The second objective of filing a personal injury lawsuit allows you to punish the individual or entity that caused your injuries. By suing the responsible parties, and winning fair compensation, you’ll help ensure that they think twice before again acting carelessly in a way that could endanger others in the future.

Who Can File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

Anyone can file a lawsuit for any purpose in Texas. What really matters is being able to file a successful personal injury lawsuit that you can clearly prove. In order for your case to be successful, you must have evidence to meet your burden of proof in each of the four elements of a personal injury claim. They are Duty, Breach, Causation, and Damages. They are listed below and include what the plaintiff must do in order to prove each of these four elements:

Duty

The first element of a successful lawsuit is the ability to clearly show that the defendant owed you a duty of care to act in a way that wouldn’t cause harm to you. Often, people owe each other the duty to behave as reasonable as possible in order to avoid hurting others. This means not only avoiding unreasonably careless activities, it also means the defendant must take affirmative (clear) precautions to protect others from getting hurt in the same way a reasonable person would do so. The reasonable person duty of care is only one of many potential duties of care that may apply to the defendants in your case. The applicable duty of care in your specific case greatly varies according to the people and circumstances involved.

Here are just a few examples of instances in which the duty of care may vary:

• Homeowners: Property owners generally owe a very low duty of care to trespassers who come onto their property without permission, or those who are on their property to commit a crime. In some instances, though, property owners may have a much greater duty to protect children from getting hurt on their property, even those of their neighbors, or children who are trespassing. Visitors who the owner allows on the property also have a right to expect a reasonably high duty of care.
• Shopkeepers: Have you ever noticed signs at stores and restaurants warning you about wet floors or steps? We wouldn’t put up signs to provide houseguests in our homes with similar warnings because they assume this high duty of care, but stores and other places of business owe an even greater duty of care to customers and must do everything reasonable to prevent them from getting hurt on the property.
• Hotels and public transportation: Like stores and other businesses, innkeepers and common carriers owe their patrons a particularly high duty of care in many instances.
• Doctors and medical professionals: Doctors and other members of the medical profession receive special training in order to be able to do their jobs. We expect that they’ll use their specialized knowledge and skill when treating and diagnosing patients. This is why, the law demands that doctors treat patients with an unusually high level of care than they would owe other people whom they are not treating. While they are at work, doctors must exercise the care expected of any reasonable doctor, rather than simply that of a reasonable person. In short, they are held to a much higher obligation than the rest of us.
• Drivers: In many states, the duty of care owed by a driver to a passenger depends on whether the passenger is paying for a ride or simply a guest. In those states where cab drivers, bus drivers and chauffeurs must be much more careful to protect the safety of a paying passenger in his car, their duty of care is usually higher.

There are also a variety of other less obvious duties of care that might apply to your case. Depending on which duty of care applies in your situation, you may have a much easier time of proving duty of care liability. However, you might have a much more difficult duty to prove. These variations represent one reason why, after you suffer an injury in Houston, personal injury legal advice that’s free is rarely enough to give you an accurate picture of your individual situation. You need the services of an attorney who specializes in personal injury law.

Breach

After showing that the defendant owed him a duty of care, a successful plaintiff moves on to prove that the defendant breached that duty of care. Proving a defendant breached the duty of care that he owed you usually requires bringing clearly unambiguous evidence to court to show exactly what the defendant did, or failed to do, that constitutes the breach. If your case goes to trial, the jury will consider your evidence of alleged breach, along with all of the circumstances involved in the accident, and determine whether the defendant did or did not breach the duty of care that you will claim.

Negligence is the most common way of proving that a defendant violates his duty of care. Negligence refers to what you believe as simple carelessness. If a defendant is careless, even during the critical moment when your accident occurred, he may be held responsible for the injuries that result.

Gross negligence (usually seen as a complete disregard for the safety of others) is another way in which people violate the duty of care they owe to you. An action constitutes gross negligence when it’s highly likely to cause injury to other people or willfully damage another’s property. Driving while intoxicated is one of many examples of gross negligence.

Finally, you might prove breach of the defendant’s applicable duty of care by demonstrating the defendant acted with the intention to cause you harm. If your injuries are the result of physical assault by the defendant, you’ll likely argue that the defendant’s actions, along with the injuries and damages arising from them, were intentional.

Causation

The ability to prove causation is a critical part of any personal injury lawsuit. It’s just not enough to show that a defendant breached the duty of care he owed you. You must also demonstrate that his actions produced your injuries. This is not always easy, especially if you were unconscious when your injuries occurred, or if many different parties might have contributed to your accident. Furthermore, the defendant you name in your lawsuit will probably try to prove that your injuries were caused by someone else, or even by you. If you can’t make this crucial link between the defendant’s actions and your injuries, your case will quickly unravel and you’ll lose.

Damages

Let’s talk a little bit more about damages. If you are successful in proving the defendant’s liability, the final step finds the defendant in your case paying damages to you in order to fairly compensate you for your injuries. Don’t confuse injuries with damages. If you are involved in an accident and break your legs, your broken legs are your injuries. Your damages are the cost of treating your broken legs, the wages you’ve lost if you couldn’t return to work during your recovery, and probably the value of other economic and non-economic losses you sustained as a result of your accident that you have now proven the defendant caused.

Your tangible (or obvious) financial losses are called special or economic damages. Most of the time, examples of special damages include lost wages, loss of earning capacity for the period of time you can’t work because of the injury, and your medical bills. Sometimes, the cost of medical treatment can be easy to calculate. Other times these costs are not, especially if your medical treatment continues longer than expected, or the full extent of your injuries is unknown. Then the task of calculating special damages is often more complex. Calculating loss of earning capacity is often a complicated matter. If you’re unable to return to work, you must account for the time-value of money lost, as well as hypothetical promotions, raises, and career changes when calculating how much you’ll demand that the defendant compensate you for income you are unable to earn in the future, whether it takes months or years for you to recover.

Intangible non-economic losses are called general or non-economic damages. These damages include compensation for your emotional suffering associated with the accident. The amount of general damages that a case is worth depends almost exclusively on the circumstances surrounding the injury and the degree of pain and suffering. This is why general damages can vary greatly from case to case even if the physical injuries are very similar. After you’ve been injured in or around Houston, personal injury legal advice you find online is almost never sufficient to help you understand the amount of general damages you may be entitled to. Because general damages are relative and subject to many different factors, call Grossman Law Offices for a free consultation to find out what your case is really worth. After we ask you some important questions about your situation, we’ll be in a position to give you a clear idea of how a jury will put a price tag on your pain and suffering and other emotional losses.

One of the biggest mistakes that personal injury victims make who don’t hire lawyers is failing to account for all of their damages. Once you collect money from a defendant, you can’t go back and ask for more compensation later. So it’s important to get it right the first time and sue the defendant for all you’re entitled to compensate for both your tangible and intangible losses.

Who is the Defendant? And Why it Matters

Simply put, in a personal injury lawsuit, you – the plaintiff – can claim anything you want, but all the defendant has to do is sit back and say “prove it.” If you don’t, the defendant wins.

In many instances, it will not be entirely clear from the outset just who was to blame for your injuries. In some cases, this is because the actions that ultimately led to your injuries may have happened long before those injuries occurred. For example, if you were involved in a car accident because there was a mattress lying in the middle of the road, the car or truck that was hauling the mattress may be 50 miles down the highway by the time you hit that mattress with your car. In other cases, so many parties may have been involved in the events leading up to your accident that it can be difficult to sort everything out and precisely know which of them was negligent. It’s always possible that several of them share the blame. When multiple individuals cause an accident they can all be named as defendants. In any event, a thorough investigation conducted by an experienced lawyer can usually identify the source (or sources) of your injuries.

Besides the importance of conducting an investigation, there’s one other key thing to know about defendants. It’s important that your lawsuit involve a solvent defendant. A defendant is solvent when he has enough money to pay you damages. If a defendant is insolvent, you won’t be successful in collecting the full amount – or any – of the damages, whether you’re able to prove that he’s liable or not. This is a sad circumstance, but one that unfortunately does occur.

Defendants know that if they can appear insolvent, they won’t be required to compensate an accident victim for his injuries. Many defendants can go to great lengths to hide their assets and make themselves appear insolvent, even when they’re not. At Grossman Law Offices, we perform stringent asset checks on defendants to get a true picture of their available resources. If the defendant in your case is hiding something, chances are very good we’ll find out about it.

What an Attorney Can do for You

At Grossman Law Offices, many of our clients are sophisticated people who are capable of picking up a textbook and learning the law. Nevertheless, plaintiffs who attempt to litigate their cases without competent, experienced attorneys rarely, if ever, recover what they are otherwise entitled to. Pursuing a personal injury claim requires not only a complete understanding of the law, but also a large amount of time, the ability of your attorney to apply the law to the facts of your individual case, expertise in discovery methods and techniques of proper investigation, along with deep knowledge of the rules of civil procedure and evidence. Even the most legitimate of claims will be summarily dismissed if the plaintiff fails to comply with a legal technicality. The best way, and often the only way, to ensure that your rights are protected is to hire a personal injury attorney.

The attorneys at Grossman Law Offices provide personal injury victims with a number of valuable legal services in every case that we handle. Our first priority is to make sure that you receive the medical care you need. Even if you’re uninsured or don’t think that you can afford treatment, we can refer you to a capable, sympathetic doctor who will take your situation into consideration. Next, we’ll get to work with a thorough investigation of every aspect of your case. The sooner we begin our investigation, the stronger your case will be. It’s best to contact a lawyer as soon as possible to make certain that critical evidence doesn’t “magically disappear” before we have a chance to find it. After our initial investigation, we’ll handle every aspect of your case. We take all phone calls, meet all deadlines, develop trial strategies, and everything else necessary to increase your chances of collecting the maximum compensation possible for your injuries.

If you’ve suffered a personal injury in or around Houston, personal injury legal advice you find online is not enough to protect your rights. Even the smallest variation in the circumstances of your accident can have crucial implications on the way your case is handled and how it’s resolved. For a free assessment of your legal situation, send us an email, or fill out the contact form at the top of this page, or better yet, call Grossman Law Office at 1-855-392-0000 (toll free). We’re available around the clock seven days a week to take your call and provide you with Houston personal injury legal advice.