The Basics of Personal Injury
There are a wide variety of different situations where personal injury rules apply:
Accidents
Personal injury rules apply in situations where someone acts in a negligent manner, and that carelessness causes harm to another person.Examples include car accidents, slip and fall incidents, and medical malpractice, among other types of cases. Learn more about negligence in personal injury cases.
Intentional Acts
Personal injury laws apply in situations where a defendant's intentional conduct causes harm to another person. Examples of this include assault and battery, and other intentional torts.
Defective Products
When a vehicle component, consumer product, medical device, pharmaceutical, or other product is defective or unreasonably dangerous, anyone harmed by use of the product might be able to file a product liability lawsuit against the manufacturer.
Defamation
Personal injury laws apply when one person's defamatory statement causes harm to another.
Who Makes Personal Injury Laws?
There are a wide variety of different situations where personal injury rules apply:
Accidents
Many personal injury laws date back to old "common law rules." Common law refers to law made by judges, as opposed to laws made by legislatures or passed in bills and statutes.
When a judge hears and decides a case, her decision on that issue of law becomes binding precedent on all other courts in the state that are "lower" than the deciding judge's court. These other courts then have to apply what the first judge said, and eventually, all of this binding precedent creates a body of "common law."
When a judge hears and decides a case, her decision on that issue of law becomes binding precedent on all other courts in the state that are "lower" than the deciding judge's court. These other courts then have to apply what the first judge said, and eventually, all of this binding precedent creates a body of "common law."
Common law is not the only source of personal injury law. Legislatures have passed statutes (laws) that touch on personal injury issues. For example, when legislatures passed workers' compensation laws, they essentially took all instances of work-related injuries outside the realm of personal injury and made workers' compensation the exclusive remedy for injured workers (in most cases precluding injury-related lawsuits against employers).
Another state law that comes into play in injury cases is the statute of limitations, which sets a limit on the amount of time you have to file an injury-related lawsuit in your state's civil court system. Learn more about time limits to file a personal injury lawsuit.
