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Written by our personal injury lawyers in Charlottesville
Personal injury lawyers must evaluate hundreds of potential personal injury cases every year in in Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Louisa County, Fluvanna County, Augusta County, Nelson County, Buckingham County, Madison County, Waynesboro, Staunton, Orange County, Greene County, and Culpepper, Virginia. Each time that the victim of a personal injury comes into the office, facts are recited and then the injury lawyer has to see if the law provides for a recovery. Just because there was an accident or an injury does not mean that there is a personal injury case. There is even a Virginia jury instruction that states the proposition that the mere fact that an accident happened does not entitle the plaintiff to a recovery.
The plaintiff, that is the injury victim, has to prove legal responsibility for the accident’s cause. In most car accident cases, winning the case involves proving that the other driver was negligent. Negligence is the failure to use ordinary care. So, violations of rules of the road, such as the offense of following too closely, are proof of negligence. It must then be established that the negligence was the proximate cause of the injury.
Although this all sounds fairly easy, in practice, it can be very difficult to prove negligence if the facts are disputed or not obvious. Sometimes, the injury victim is unable to remember what happened because of the injury. In that situation, other witnesses must fill in the gaps. If there are no other witnesses, it may not be possible to establish what happened. Sometimes, personal injury lawyers in Charlottesville will hire an expert to assist in the fact finding process. An accident reconstructionist may be able to use the physical evidence from the crash scene to determine the sequence of events. Virginia does permit the use of such experts, but a series of Virginia Supreme Court decisions has severely limited what matters may be the subject of such testimony. The primary limitation personal injury lawyers face is that the expert may not offer an opinion on a matter when the jury can use its collective knowledge to arrive at the same conclusion. It is not easy to determine what is within the jury’s knowledge and what isn’t. For instance, do most jurors’ know how to evaluate car crash damage patterns such that they can evaluate how the accident happened? A Virginia trial judge could rule either for or against the admissibility of the expert’s testimony in such a case.
If you are meeting with a personal injury lawyer to go over your potential injury case, you should be prepared. Make sure that you have the names and contact information for all witnesses. Have all pictures of the scene and vehicles printed out. A picture on a cell phone is not going to be of much use until it is printed out. And, get together all your insurance information so that coverage issues can be evaluated.
You can collect for injuries. Call the personal injury law firm of Wilson & Hajek
Personal injury lawyers in Charlottesville serving Louisa County, Fluvanna County, Albemarle County, and all of central Virginia.
