If you’ve been in a car accident, you may be trying to determine who was at fault. This is usually called being careless, in more formal legal terms, negligent.
In many states, you have to have “no-fault” or personal injury protection (PIP) insurance coverage. So before thinking about the other driver, you’ll need to make sure you’ve made your own claims for medical expenses, lost wages, and replacement services.
If you want to claim a negligence action against the other driver, you may have up to six years to do that. However, filing a claim as quickly as possible can help to ensure that evidence is preserved and witness testimony remains reliable.
FindLaw.com states that in order to prove that the other driver was negligent, he must have “failed to exercise reasonable care and that their carelessness caused or contributed to your injury.” Additionally, if someone died due to negligence, then a wrongful death action can be claimed. You can even bring a negligence action if you were partially at fault-just as long your fault is less than the other driver’s. Depending on the type of accident, the deadlines for filing civil lawsuits vary.
If you’re looking for evidence of negligence, here are a few places to explore with the aid of your attorney.
It should be noted that with both rear-end collisions and left-turn crashes, it all depends on where the damage on the cars is located.
If you’ve been involved in a car accident and are either facing a lawsuit or would like to claim a negligence action, reaching out to an experienced personal law attorney should be your next step. A qualified lawyer can thoroughly assess your case and give you needed guidance and support as you recover and move forward from the trauma of the crash.