Do I Have a Valid Personal Injury Claim?

    LANCASTER, PA, June 28, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- If you have suffered a serious personal injury - in a car accident, because of medical malpractice, or in any other circumstance involving negligence - you must first determine whether or not you have a valid claim that is worth pursuing.

An experienced personal injury lawyer can tell you whether or not you have a valid claim during an initial consultation. But before you even sit down with a lawyer, you should have some idea about your claim's validity.

Types of Personal Injury

Most personal injury claims involve physical injuries. Some of the most severe physical injuries that people seek compensation for include:

- Traumatic brain injury
- Spinal cord injury
- Burn injury

However, personal injury can also involve financial and emotional injuries. For example, if you were the victim of bad faith insurance, this qualifies as a personal injury.

Proving Negligence

The key defining aspect of any successful personal injury claim is its argument for negligence. In order to win compensation, you must prove that your injuries were caused by another party's negligence, recklessness, or wrongdoing. Negligence is defined as any action that falls below the generally accepted standard of behavior for the protection of others against unreasonable risk and harm.

In a personal injury case, this means you must produce hard evidence that proves:

- You suffered an injury
- Your injuries were caused by the accident
- The accident was caused by another person's negligence

This is where the experience of a personal injury attorney comes into play. Constructing a strong case that convincingly tells your story with the necessary evidence to back it up is nuanced and complex. Attempting to do this on your own may prove impossible. A good attorney will have access to resources that you don't have, and will know exactly what type of evidence to look for when investigating your accident.

Statute of Limitations

One final factor to keep in mind when you are considering the validity of your personal injury case is the time window in which a lawsuit can be filed. This time window, called the "statute of limitations," will be different from state to state. If you wait too long to bring a personal injury case against the negligent party who harmed you, you may not be able to recover any compensation at all.

For more information about personal injury lawsuits, please visit the website of the experienced Lancaster personal injury lawyers at Atlee Hall, LLP at www.atleehall.com.

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