You may have been going about your daily errands as normal, and, as always, proceeding with an abundance of caution in doing so. Even still, you may have unexpectedly found yourself in the middle of a serious accident, where you sustained severe injuries and damages as a result. Well, the most reasonable conclusion you may draw from this is that someone’s negligence interfered with your otherwise safe plans. With that being said, please, continue reading to learn how negligence possibly contributed to your accident and how one of the experienced Panama City personal injury attorneys at Manuel & Thompson, PA can help establish this in your claim.
How does negligence contribute to a personal injury accident?
Especially if you were minding yourself and your external surroundings with care, it is more than likely that another party’s negligence prompted the onset of your personal injury accident. More specifically, the following sequence of events may apply to you and your case:
- Another party may have had a duty of care to lead with carefulness.
- Another party may have breached this duty by instead leading with negligence.
- Another party’s negligence may have caused your personal injury accident to arise.
- Your personal injury accident may have caused your bodily injuries and property damages to arise.
- Your bodily injuries and property damages may have caused your economic and non-economic losses to arise.
Ultimately, if you can prove all the above elements are true contributors to your personal injury accident, you may have a valid legal claim against the negligent party. In this way, you may successfully recover financial compensation for your current and future economic and non-economic losses.
How much negligence is needed to file a personal injury claim?
You may feel hesitant in moving forward with your personal injury claim if you have a tinge of guilt that you acted partially negligent in your accident event. However, you may feel more confident doing so with a better understanding of Florida’s modified comparative negligence law, which went into effect in March 2023.
Notably, this law holds that you, the plaintiff of a personal injury claim, may still successfully recover compensation for your losses if you are less than 50 percent to blame for your accident event transpiring. However, the amount of damages you may recover may be proportional to the amount of blame you are assigned.
For example, say that the civil court finds you 20 percent at fault and the other party (i.e., the defendant) 80 percent at fault. Well, this means that you may only be awarded 80 percent of the total damages you named in your claim. All to say, legal action may still be something worth pursuing.
For this reason, we strongly encourage you to retain the services of one of the skilled Panama City personal injury attorneys. You may do so by scheduling an initial consultation with Manuel & Thompson, PA today.