If you spend time around a personal injury lawyer, you’ll hear the same terms repeatedly. They might mention economic damages. If they hire a client and represent them in a personal injury lawsuit, they might go after a defendant and get them.
Economic damages can help injured parties get restitution. If you bring a personal injury lawsuit against a person or business, you want that. If you can get economic damages, either through a settlement or by winning your case, you can use that money when you have pressing bills that you must pay.
Let’s discuss personal injury cases where you may seek economic damages.
What is a Persona Injury Case?
Before we get into common personal injury cases, let’s ensure you understand what we mean when we mention this term. A personal injury case, also called a lawsuit, means a civil action you take when a person or entity harms you.
This person or entity might also face criminal charges, but the police and prosecutors handle that. That’s not your concern. You’re bringing a civil case, meaning you want money if this person or entity did something wrong or negligent that harmed you.
You must prove this person hurt you. Otherwise, you will likely get no money. Now, let’s discuss some specific examples. In all these instances, you can seek economic damages because you’ll probably miss work with an injury or illness.
Car Wrecks
Some lawyers do only personal injury cases, and some only do car wrecks. They can sometimes have a lucrative practice that way.
That’s because car wrecks and the resulting personal injury cases work their way through the court system all the time. New ones start daily when negligent drivers hit other vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists.
If someone loses control and hits your vehicle, maybe you can’t sue them and win. For instance, if they drove the speed limit and lost control when their car hit some ice, that’s not their fault.
Maybe they drove considerably over the speed limit, though. If they lost control that way and hit your car, injuring you, then you can probably bring a successful lawsuit.
If the other driver consumed alcohol and then drove, you might bring a successful personal injury lawsuit if they hit your car and hurt you. They willingly drank and then drove. That’s illegal, and it shows poor judgment.
Dog Bite Cases
If someone does not tie up their dog and they let it run loose in their yard with no warning signs posted, you might sue them if the dog bites you. Maybe you’re a postal carrier dropping off a package, and you’re not expecting a vicious dog that appears out of nowhere.
If the dog’s owner lets the animal out of the house, and it runs alongside your bike and bites you while you’re peddling past, you can sue the owner then as well.
Product Liability Cases
You can sue a company if they make a product that harms you. These personal injury cases happen all the time.
Sometimes, you might join a class action lawsuit if this product harms many consumers. You can get your own lawyer but still join the class action suit if one exists.
If you can prove the company making the product did not test it sufficiently, you should win your case.
Maybe the company rushed the product onto store shelves, and they didn’t conduct the testing that the law demands. To win your case, though, you must prove this, which isn’t always easy.
Often, a company will settle a class action suit because they don’t want the bad press. You must decide whether the amount they offer each injured party satisfies you.
Medical Malpractice Cases
You probably already know the basic medical malpractice concept, even if you’re not in the legal profession. If a doctor demonstrates negligence and harms you, you can sue them. You should win if you prove that the doctor didn’t satisfy the duty of care that they owed you.
If the doctor operates on you after staying awake all night, that’s negligence. If a nurse misreads a doctor’s prescription and gives you the wrong medication, making you ill, you can sue them in that instance as well.
These common personal injury lawsuits work their way through the court system, and you can win your case with the right lawyer. Since you’ll likely miss work with each situation we’ve described, you can certainly pursue economic damages.
Read More:
6 Types of injuries in personal injury cases
