What Is Considered a Personal Injury?

Understanding Personal Injury

A personal injury can be an injury to your body, but can also be an injury to your mental state or emotions. So, what is considered a personal injury? The law of personal injury is meant to help compensate the injured party for the damage that the injury has caused them and exists to protect people from harm and help compensate for their losses if they have been injured.

If you have been injured and are considering a personal injury lawsuit, you should consult with an experienced attorney. If you’ve been injured, you may be facing pain and suffering, rising medical bills, and lost wages. This can be very confusing and frustrating. A personal injury lawyer can speak with you to discuss whether you are entitled to compensation and can guide you through the legal process.

What is a Tort?

Personal injury law falls within the branch of the law called “torts.” A tort is a civil wrong, as opposed to a criminal wrong. A criminal wrong is a wrong against society and is meant to enforce justice for the public. The goal of criminal wrongs is to imprison the wrongdoer, which both keeps society safe and rehabilitates the wrongdoer.

Tort law, however, remedies private wrongs (wrongs between private citizens or companies) and is meant to compensate the victim. The goal for the wrongdoer is not imprisonment, but the payment of whatever monetary compensation the victim requires to be fully compensated for the injury he or she has suffered.

There are three different types of tort, which means that there are three types of personal injury claims: Negligence, strict liability, and intentional wrongs.

What is a Negligence Personal Injury?

Personal injury claims are often the result of a negligent action. Negligence is the failure to act with the level of care that a reasonably careful person would have used. A successful personal injury claim must prove all four elements of a negligence claim:

• A duty of care. The party who was at fault must have owed the injured party a duty of reasonable care. This is an obligation to avoid harming others when the harm is foreseeable. For example, drivers have the responsibility to drive safely and follow traffic laws, which means they owe a reasonable duty of care to the other motorists and pedestrians using the roadways around them.
• Breach of the duty of care. The injured party must prove that the at-fault party breached the standard of care owed to them. They must prove what the wrongful conduct was and why that action was a breach. If a pedestrian was injured by a motorist, the pedestrian must detail what the conduct was and demonstrate that a reasonable driver would not have caused that harm.
• That negligence caused the injury. The injured party needs to show a direct link between the action and their injury. The negligence must have been an essential part of the harm caused by the at-fault party.
• Actual damages. The injured party must be able to prove that they suffered actual harm, such as medical bills or lost wages. These damages can also be the mental pain and suffering from the accident or loss of companionship with a partner or children. Some of the most common negligence personal injury claims are car, truck, bike, or motorcycle accidents, metro accidents, pedestrian accidents, medical malpractice, birth injuries, premises liability, or injuries while on the property of a commercial or residential property (such as a slip and fall), products liability, nursing home abuse and neglect, worker’s compensation and injuries on the job, and wrongful death.

What is a Strict Liability Personal Injury?

A strict liability tort occurs only in specific situations that are so inherently dangerous that the injured party doesn’t need to prove that the other party breached their duty to them. The action is considered to be so dangerous that it is clear that a duty was breached.

In a strict liability case, all that the injured party has to prove is that the at-fault party caused the injury without proving negligence. Some examples of strict liability personal injury claims are:

• Injury related to wild animals. An example is a dog bite if the dog was known to be dangerous, or any injury by a wild, undomesticated animal. In these situations, the owner of the animal will most likely be strictly liable for injuries caused by the animal.
• Injury related to abnormally dangerous activities. An example of an abnormally dangerous activity that might give rise to strict liability is working with explosives or storing toxic chemicals.
• Injury related to dangerously defective products. Products liability is the branch of the law that holds manufacturers of products strictly liable if there was a defect in the product that caused the injury.

What is an Intentional Personal Injury?

An intentional tort is an intentional action causing a private injury that does not rise to the level of criminal liability. Some of the most common intentional torts in personal injury are:

• Battery. Battery is any intentional harmful or offensive contact with another person.
• Assault. Assault is any intentional act that puts another person in reasonable apprehension of battery– of a harmful or offensive contact. For an act to be considered an assault, it must have put the victim in immediate apprehension that a battery would occur.
• False imprisonment. False imprisonment is intentionally confining another person to a bounded area where they have no reasonable means of escape.
• Intentional infliction of emotional distress. Intentional infliction of emotional distress is intentional outrageous conduct meant to cause severe distress.

What is the Difference Between a Bodily Injury and a Personal Injury?

Though “bodily injury” and “personal injury” sound similar, personal injury is a broader branch of the law that includes bodily injury, as well as injury to a victim’s emotions. Many of the intentional personal injuries listed above are meant solely to protect the mental state of the victim. Assault, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress are all personal injury claims that relate to emotional distress.

The tort of assault, contrary to popular belief, protects only against the reasonable fear of a battery or attack. False imprisonment is meant to compensate the victim for the mental anguish associated with being trapped or held against one’s will. Finally, intentional infliction of emotional distress explicitly protects the mental state of the victim and compensates for emotional distress. None of these types of torts are “bodily injuries,” but they are personal injuries.

Contact the Personal Injury Lawyers at Regan Zambri Long, PLLC

Have you been injured and suspect that your claim falls under one of these types of personal injury? What is considered a personal injury? If you’ve been injured and are considering a personal injury claim, you should consult with an experienced attorney. The legal knowledge and experience that a good lawyer can bring to the table are crucial to the success of a personal injury claim.

Regan Zambri Long has achieved national recognition for personal injury litigation and has obtained millions of dollars in personal injury recovery for its clients for a wide range of personal injury types. Regan Zambri Long PLLC protects the rights of injury victims in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. As well as those affected by government entities.

A lawyer from Regan Zambri Long, PLLC will discuss your claim with you, talk to you about proving the elements of your personal injury claim, and guide you through the litigation process. Call today to schedule a free consultation.