What's Personal Injury?

What is considered personal injury

The term personal injury refers to an area of the law that lets you get a legal remedy for all losses stemming from an accident or other incident where someone else’s carelessness or intentional conduct caused you to be injured.

A personal injury case is a civil action, meaning that when some other person or a business is found to be legally responsible for causing your injuries, the remedy comes in the form of damages, money that is paid by the liable party to the injured party. Compare this with criminal liability, where the person who has committed the wrong will be subject to sanctions like imprisonment, fines, and community service if they are prosecuted and convicted in criminal court.

Most personal injury cases are governed by the law of negligence, which dictates the level of reasonable care that is owed from one person to another in a given situation, and the kinds of conduct that would amount to a breach of that legal duty, leading to liability for any resulting injury.

For example, when a driver is behind the wheel, she has a legal obligation to other drivers, to operate her vehicle with reasonable care and caution, which includes obeying traffic laws. If the driver runs a stop sign, and strikes another car, the driver will be deemed negligent, and therefore legally responsible for all injuries that resulted from the car accident.

      

But personal injury law also includes cases where someone is injured by a defective product, and in those cases it’s not usually necessary to establish negligence or carelessness. Instead, product defect cases are governed by a legal concept known as strict liability. And in still more situations, when one person’s intentional conduct results in injuries to another person, a personal injury claim can be brought as an intentional tort case.