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The Elements of Negligence In California Personal Injury Cases

Personal injury claims turn on whether or not the defendant was negligent in his or her actions to the plaintiff, but what does that mean? Negligence is a legal term of art that gets tossed around rather casually by lawyers when it comes to recovering damages. Like most legal terms, it has a very particular technical meaning. Negligence is an act or failure to act when you owe a duty to another individual.

 The Prima Facie Elements of a Tort in Negligence – In order to prove negligence in California, the plaintiff must be able to demonstrate the following elements on the part of the defendant.

 Duty: The defendant had a duty to the plaintiff to either act or refrain from committing an act. Everyone has duty to use an appropriate standard of care in many different activities. In determining whether or not one party owed another party a duty, a court will consider whether or not the person who suffered the injury was a foreseeable victim of the defendant’s conduct. If a driver hits another car on the road, the driver and passengers of the other car are foreseeable victims to whom the driver owed a duty of care to.

Breach: The defendant breached the duty owed to the plaintiff. Determining whether a breach has occurred is generally turns on the facts of the case. If a driver hits a pedestrian due to speeding, the driver has breached his duty of care to the pedestrian. Breaches of duties can also occur if a defendant violates a California statute, such as the driver violating the speeding law in the previous example. This is called negligence per se.

 Causation: The defendant’s breach of duty were the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. California courts determine this by applying the ‘substantial factor’ test. This is defined as whether a reasonable person would consider the incident that occurred to have contributed to the damages suffered by the plaintiff. The substantial factor is not one that is trivial or remote. The substantial factor does not have to be the sole cause of the plaintiff’s damages, but can be one of many.

 Damages: The plaintiff suffered actual damages. This is the easiest and most concrete element of negligence. There is usually not a question of whether or not a plaintiff has been injured. Rather, most defendants will argue that the damage suffered by the plaintiff is not as serious as the plaintiff claims.

 Contact a Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino County Personal Injury Attorney to Prove Negligence in Your Case

An experienced personal injury attorney will be able to investigate and set out the facts to show that the prima facie elements of negligence are present in your case in order to recover damages for your injuries. If you have been injured by someone else’s negligence, let an attorney do the hard work for you. Contact the Law Offices of Justin King at (909) 297-5001 for a free initial consultation.  Our attorneys are legal professionals familiar with the areas of law needed to recover for your injuries.


About the Author:

The Law Office of Justin H. King


Justin King is recognized as one of the preeminent personal injury litigation attorneys in the Inland Empire.  Justin has built his reputation, one case at a time, by vigorously and compassionately representing injury victims against insurance companies and Justin has achieved numerous six and seven figure results for his clients.Justin has an AV Preeminent Peer Review rating from Martindale-Hubbell which is the highest rating a lawyer can receive for legal ability and ethical standards and is reserved for just 8 percent of lawyers nationwide.  In 2015, Justin was named by the National Trial Lawyers to its list of Top 40 Under 40 Civil Plaintiff Lawyers and in 2016 the National Trial... View full business profile here: The Law Office of Justin H. King





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