If you have suf­fered a per­sonal injury, you may be enti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion for your injury. Legal respon­si­bil­ity, called “lia­bil­ity,” revolves around the sim­ple fact that most injuries hap­pen because some­one was care­less or “neg­li­gent.” Even if you believe you may have partly caused your own injury, in most states you can still get some com­pen­sa­tion from any­one else who was also care­less and partly respon­si­ble for your injury.

There are sev­eral fac­tors that affect the poten­tial suc­cess and value of a per­sonal injury claim. Such fac­tors include the abil­ity to prove the fault of another for your injury and the nature and extent of your injuries. If you sus­pect you may have a legal claim, you should con­tact an attor­ney for an eval­u­a­tion of your case.  Mr. Keener and the attor­neys at the firm are expe­ri­enced with cases like yours, and can tell you at the out­set whether it is worth­while to pur­sue legal action. If you are unlikely to pre­vail, Mr. Keener will tell you so, and you will not need to incur the time and expense of pur­su­ing an unpromis­ing claim.

In pur­su­ing per­sonal injury claims, the firm works with inves­ti­ga­tors and experts in spe­cial­ized areas, who can skill­fully inves­ti­gate the tech­ni­cal and med­ical aspects of your case. More impor­tantly, an Mr. Keener can work through the maze of paper­work nec­es­sary to resolve your job injury, car acci­dents, truck acci­dents, motor­cy­cle acci­dents or other claims so that you can get on with your life.

Steps You Can Take Now

There are sev­eral steps you can take to increase your chances of recov­ery, and increase your poten­tial over­all recov­ery in a per­sonal injury case, even before you meet with an attor­ney at the firm.

Such steps include:

• Writ­ing down as much as you can about the acci­dent or injury itself, your injuries and any other losses (such as wages) you’ve suf­fered as a result of the accident.
• Mak­ing notes of con­ver­sa­tions that you have with peo­ple involved in the acci­dent or the injury claim.
• Pre­serv­ing evi­dence of who caused the acci­dent and what dam­age was done by col­lect­ing phys­i­cal evi­dence and tak­ing pho­tographs, and locat­ing peo­ple who wit­nessed the acci­dent and who might be able to help you prove your case.
• Noti­fy­ing any­one you think might be respon­si­ble for your injuries of your inten­tion to file a claim for your injuries, espe­cially if a gov­ern­ment agency or employee may be involved.

How Much is Your Per­sonal Injury Claim Worth?

Deter­min­ing how much cer­tain injuries are worth is a crit­i­cal aspect of any injury claim. It is also the part of a claim about which it is most dif­fi­cult to gen­er­al­ize, since the amount depends on your very par­tic­u­lar circumstances.

Mr. Keener or another lawyer at the firm can be more objec­tive about your case than you can, and will not make a rash deci­sion. Where you may be tempted, for instance, to go for a fast set­tle­ment, Mr. Keener may coun­sel you that it is in your best inter­ests to wait for a more appro­pri­ate offer.

The firm is used to work­ing with insur­ance com­pa­nies, and will not be con­fused by their tac­tics or feel pres­sured to set­tle for an unsat­is­fac­tory amount. Personal injury attor­neys work hard to reach the best set­tle­ments for their clients, as early in the lit­i­ga­tion process as possible.

If a trial becomes nec­es­sary, a Mr. Keener can zeal­ously rep­re­sent you in court and work toward achiev­ing the best pos­si­ble jury ver­dict in your favor. In assess­ing the full value of your claim, the firm will con­sider every­thing you have suf­fered as a result of your injury.

Usu­ally, a per­son who is liable for an injury must pay the injured per­son for med­ical care and related expenses income lost because of the acci­dent; lost time spent unable to work or under­go­ing treat­ment for injuries per­ma­nent phys­i­cal dis­abil­ity or dis­fig­ure­ment; loss of fam­ily, social and edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ences, includ­ing missed school or train­ing, vaca­tion or recre­ation, or a spe­cial event; emo­tional dam­ages, such as stress, embar­rass­ment, depres­sion or strains on fam­ily rela­tion­ships — for exam­ple, the inabil­ity to take care of chil­dren, anx­i­ety over the effects of an acci­dent on an unborn child, or inter­fer­ence with sex­ual rela­tions - and dam­aged property.

Also, the fol­low­ing guide­lines usu­ally apply:

• The more painful the injury, the higher the poten­tial dam­ages you may recover.
• The more inva­sive and long last­ing the med­ical treat­ment, the higher poten­tial dam­ages you may recover.
• The more obvi­ous the med­ical evi­dence of the injury, the higher poten­tial dam­ages you may recover.
• The longer the recov­ery period, the higher poten­tial dam­ages you may recover.
• The more seri­ous and vis­i­ble any per­ma­nent effect of the injury, the higher poten­tial dam­ages you may recover.

How Will Fault for My Injury Be Determined?

The extent of every party’s fault in caus­ing your injury is the most impor­tant fac­tor affect­ing how much you are likely to receive for your per­sonal injury claim. Deter­min­ing fault for an acci­dent is not an exact sci­ence. But in most claims, your attor­ney will at least have a good idea whether another per­son was entirely at fault, and the extent, if any, that you were at fault. What­ever that rough per­cent­age of your fault might be — 10%, 50%, or 75% — that will be the amount by which the dam­ages total will be reduced to arrive at a final set­tle­ment or award figure.

Var­i­ous rules of fault apply in dif­fer­ent types of per­sonal injury actions.  Here are some exam­ples of lia­bil­ity rules in dif­fer­ent types of actions:

Sup­pose you are injured in a store.  Can you recover dam­ages from the store? It depends on the facts of the case. Store­own­ers must keep their premises rea­son­ably safe for cus­tomers by inspect­ing and dis­cov­er­ing any dan­ger­ous con­di­tions. They also must keep all aisles clear and prop­erly main­tained. A judge or jury will look at whether the owner was aware of the con­di­tion that caused your injury and how long it had existed.

A judge or jury will also look at your con­duct in rela­tion to the con­di­tion. If you’ve been injured by a dan­ger­ous con­sumer prod­uct, you may have an eas­ier time recov­er­ing com­pen­sa­tion for your injuries than those who are injured in other ways.

“Prod­uct lia­bil­ity” involves spe­cial cir­cum­stances.  The legal rules con­cern­ing who is respon­si­ble for defec­tive or dan­ger­ous prod­ucts are dif­fer­ent from ordi­nary injury lia­bil­ity law, and these rules some­times make it eas­ier for an injured per­son to recover damages.

For sev­eral rea­sons, the law has devel­oped a doc­trine known as “strict lia­bil­ity” which allows a per­son injured by a defec­tive or unex­pect­edly dan­ger­ous prod­uct to recover com­pen­sa­tion from the maker or seller of the prod­uct with­out show­ing that the man­u­fac­turer or seller was actu­ally negligent.

Many thou­sands of peo­ple are injured each year - some very seri­ously - when they slip or trip and fall on a dan­ger­ous floor, a flight of stairs or a rough patch of ground. There is no pre­cise way to deter­mine when some­one else is legally respon­si­ble for some­thing on which you slip or trip. Each case turns on whether the prop­erty owner acted care­fully so that slip­ping or trip­ping was not likely to hap­pen, and whether you were care­less in not see­ing or avoid­ing the thing that caused you to fall.

Car acci­dents are by far the most com­mon type of per­sonal injury case in our court sys­tem today.

Except in those states where leg­is­la­tion has been passed doing away with fault as an issue (no-fault laws), these cases are lit­i­gated under gen­eral neg­li­gence principles.

The injured plain­tiff is required to prove that the defen­dant was neg­li­gent, that the neg­li­gence caused the acci­dent, and that the acci­dent caused the plaintiff’s injuries.

As with other types of acci­dents, fig­ur­ing out who is at fault in car acci­dents, truck acci­dents, or motor­cy­cle acci­dents is a mat­ter of decid­ing who was neg­li­gent. In many cases your instincts will tell you that a driver, cyclist or pedes­trian acted care­lessly, but not what rule or rules that per­son violated.

Your case can be strength­ened if you find some “offi­cial” sup­port for your con­clu­sion. Your attor­ney will look to a num­ber of sources to help you deter­mine who was at fault for your acci­dent, such as police reports, state traf­fic laws, and witnesses.

There are many dif­fer­ent types of per­sonal injury actions, and sev­eral the­o­ries of fault that may apply in a given case. Dis­cussing your case with a per­sonal injury attor­ney is the best way to have a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion of the like­li­hood of suc­cess if you decide to bring a claim for your injuries, and of the poten­tial value of your case.