Terms That Often Come Up in the Personal Injury Legal Niche

If you become a lawyer in the personal injury niche, you’ll likely find that you have plenty of work. You might even specialize in certain subcategories of personal injury law, like car wreck crashes or medical malpractice. Since so many individuals sue people and companies all the time, you might have a very lucrative career.

If you’re going to sue someone, though, you might not understand some of the terms that your lawyer uses to describe what’s happening with your case. For instance, maybe you’re having a hard time understanding the difference between general and special damages.

It’s important that you understand the terms that your lawyer uses, so let’s talk about some of the ones that come up often in the personal injury legal niche.

General Damages

The term “general damages” in personal injury law means non-monetary losses that you might try to recoup from the defendant who you’re suing. These losses come from an injury you sustained or illness you endured that you feel the defendant caused.

Physical pain and suffering would fall into the category of general damages. So would loss of companionship or a lower quality of life.

If you lost your job after the accident or incident that hurt you or made you sick, and you can’t find another one, you might include that in this category. You can regard a mental health condition you are now dealing with the same way.

Specific Damages

As for “specific damages,” that term in personal injury law describes financial losses that you incurred following the injury or illness for which you blame the person or entity that you’re suing. Those might include the cost of medications, ambulance rides to the hospital, or ER visits. They would include lost wages as well.

You could also put travel costs or property damage in this category, if applicable. If you are paying out of pocket for assistance or care following the illness or injury, you would also put those costs in this category.

Contingency Payment Plans

If you want to hire a lawyer after you allege someone hurt you or made you sick, the attorney may suggest that you hire them via a contingency payment plan. That means you’re not paying them any money, including an upfront fee, to hire them.

Instead, you will only pay them an agreed-upon sum if they win your case for you. In this context, that means forcing a settlement offer from the defendant that you accept or getting a jury’s decision in your favor.

Since most personal injury lawyers will work under this type of structure, you definitely want to make sure that you understand this term.

Liability

In personal injury law, the term “liability” matters a great deal as well. It means the state of having caused or being responsible for an injury.

If you sue a person or business, then part of how you can get your money comes from establishing conclusively that this individual or entity harmed you. In other words, you want the jury to find them liable.

If you can’t do that, or you don’t provide enough tangible evidence, then it’s not very likely you will win your case.

Duty of Care

If you sue a doctor or hospital, you might hear your lawyer use the term “duty of care.” In this instance, the term means a duty that the doctor, hospital, or some other medical entity had to treat you in a particular way.

If they didn’t live up to that, then you can probably argue that they showed negligence. They didn’t provide the care that they should have and that the medical profession demanded.

Settlement

You will certainly want to know and understand the term “settlement” as well. In these cases, it means a sum of money that the defendant offers you that you can decide to take, or not, as you so desire. The defendant normally puts up that sum of money because they feel that, if they take the case to trial or it goes all the way to a jury’s decision, then they will probably lose and have to pay even more money as a result.

Not every personal injury case ends with a settlement, but many of them do. Only rarely will a defendant feel that they did nothing wrong and risk letting a jury decide their fate.

Keep all these terms in mind as you pursue justice via your personal injury lawsuit.