Personal Injury Opening Statement

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 3:05 pm 
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Have you ever wondered how a personal injury opening statement works? A personal injury trial is a type of trial that will determine if a party is liable for physical damages to a person. The process for the trial is one that will work with a series of important steps.

The jury will have to be chosen for the trial. This will work in that all potential jurors will be reviewed to see if they can fairly judge a personal injury trial.

Opening statements will then be made. These are statements in a personal injury trial that will allow the plaintiff to present facts involved with an injury and a defendant to interpret those stated facts.

Testimony from witnesses and victims will be held at the next part. This includes data that relates to what a victim experienced as well as what people saw in a case. Cross-examination might be used in the personal injury trial process. This is where data that relates to what a witness stated will be questioned and reviewed.

Closing arguments will also be used. These arguments are used by both sides as a means of summarizing what they have presented. These are going to be the last statements for the jury members to work with.

The main part of these steps is that they will be used to give the jury an idea of what happened in a personal injury case. The members will be able to see what data is available and what is being used in a particular case. This data is going to be reviewed by all jury members so that they can vote on whether or not the plaintiff or defendant is the right party in the case.

The last part of the personal injury trial involves a ruling by the jury. In most states a unanimous ruling will be required. However, some states will allow a ruling to be in a 9 to 3 majority or greater.

For more information, visit chicagopiattorney.com. They’re the top chicago lawyer available. If you need a chicago injury lawyer, be sure to visit their site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kathy_Mercado

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Personal Injury Pain And Suffering

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 10:10 pm 
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Lets take a look at the aspects of personal injury pain and suffering. In a personal injury lawsuit, a defendant is not only responsible for paying medical bills, but also for pain and suffering, lost wages and the loss of one’s ability to enjoy life. While this seems like it can be arbitrary numbers, personal injury lawyer Charles Flaxman who is with Flaxman Law Group based in south Florida, explains how one attaches a monetary amount to something so seemingly esoteric.
It seems that medical bills are rather easy to quantify as they usually have a dollar amount at the bottom. But isn’t it extremely difficult to monetize one’s pain and suffering or ability to enjoy life?

It is partially correct that medical bills are much more straightforward to prove in court, but medical bills are still not as simple and easy to prove as one might think. The defendant’s side will argue that the treatments do not relate to the accident, or that they were the wrong type of treatment or any other sort of other argument that will try to lower the medical costs that they will have to pay. Still, numbers from a hospital bill for a specific treatment are by far more hard and fast than pain, suffering and loss of one’s ability to enjoy life and work.

While pain and suffering are far more subjective, we do have means to monetize and prove damages. There are precedents set from previous cases which we refer to and also basic questions we ask to attach a price tag. The way to quantify pain and suffering, or even embarrassment, is to ask the right questions to the jury and to the plaintiff: How much would you pay me to not take away the ability for you to walk for the rest of your life? How much would you pay me so you won’t have back pain the rest of your life? How much would you pay me to not put a horrible permanent burn scar on your face?

From there, we try to quantify it. Each case is different, of course, but we use a number of tools and experts who are professionals at this exact system who try to attach a number. They use various tools and algorithms that help them get as close to the mark as possible. There is a mortality table, which uses a variety of factors to make an estimation as to how long this person will live so we can calculate years of life expectancy.  Doctors can advise the jury as to how much pain or how badly this particular injury damages a person’s ability to enjoy life. An economist might be able to calculate how much money this person might have made in the next 30 years based on his career given data he is familiar with as well as the economical climate and forecasts.

We try to quantify it as best we can. There is no exact science to this skill, but rather, it is an art. While there are certainly precedents set and experts who can advise, in the end, it is subjective and can vary vastly from case to case. The bottom line though is that I have 37 years doing Personal Injury Law

and I usually know about what a person can get for a specific injury and that is what we try to aim for. A surgical knee tends to go for $40,000 to $75,000 for example. I can usually listen to the client, get a basic understanding of the circumstances, and give a ballpark figure. If we do sign with the client, then we start getting into the details as to how much exactly we should seek in damages.

In the end though, unless we settle, which happens in probably 90% of cases, it is up to the jury to decide. Once it goes to trial, there is no right and wrong and there is no fair or unfair. Whatever the jury decides is the correct amount and that becomes the law.

Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/law-articles/personal-injury-lawsuits-how-to-value-pain-and-suffering-1333687.html#ixzz0qp3lLKaZ
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Personal Injury Expert Witness

Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 11:19 pm 
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This article deals with the aspects of personal injury expert witness.

Most legal cases, both civil and criminal, will involve testimony from witnesses. A witness is a person with firsthand information that is related to the case. The best known example is an eyewitness, or a person who saw an incident as it unfolded and is willing to relate his or her story to the court. Another very common example is an expert witness, who is a person with expertise in a certain field related to the crime or accident being discussed.

Expert witnesses generally work for pay. They can be hired by both defendants and prosecutors (or plaintiffs, in civil cases). An expert witness may offer facts and insights to an attorney and his or her client while they are researching and building their legal case. In addition to this – or instead of it – the witness may share testimony directly with the judge and/or jury.

Examples

An expert witness can be almost anyone who knows more than the average person about a certain topic. Common examples of witnesses for plaintiffs in civil claims include:

  • A doctor or other medical professional who can discuss the plaintiff’s injuries, how they likely occurred, how severe they are, or how they have affected the plaintiff’s life
  • A mechanical or electrical engineer, who can explain the flaws in a building or product’s design or construction
  • A psychological expert, who can describe the emotional effects that the incident in question caused for the plaintiff

As you can see, an expert witness can do a lot to either make a case stronger or pick the other side’s case apart. Fortunately, legal regulations are in place to prevent attorneys from abusing the system of expert witnesses to unfairly manipulate or even lie to juries.

The Legal Process

If you and your attorney decide that a qualified witness would help your case, the first step is to find a reliable one. Of course, the witness you hire will need verifiable qualifications, in order to prove that he or she does in fact know more about the subject than most people. You will also need to demonstrate to the judge overseeing your case that his or her area of expertise is related to your case.

If the witness for your case will be testifying at the trial or hearing, he or she will need to complete a deposition. This is a kind of recorded interview attended by everyone involved in the case. During this interview, attorneys for both the plaintiff and the defendant will be able to ask as many questions as they want. When the witness testifies, his or her story cannot vary from the information reviewed in the deposition.

Finally, there are restrictions on the information a witness can share. He or she must stick to facts that are directly relevant to both his or her field of expertise and the case at hand. He or she cannot share any personal opinions about the case or make non-factual statements.

For more information about the legal process, contact the Charlotte personal injury lawyers of the Law Offices of William K. Goldfarb.

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Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 4:10 am 
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The Burden of Proof Regarding personal injury Cases

Before people were able to sue others in personal injury cases, there was no way to seek justice in cases that involved negligence. The only way someone could be tried for a wrong act was in a criminal court. And if the person did not commit what would qualify as an intentional crime, he or she could get away with harming another person with no repercussion whatsoever.

The main reason behind personal injury cases is for an injured party to try to obtain economic recovery for losses and suffering. Today, many people choose to pursue personal injury cases even if the person that harmed them was charged in a criminal court as well. If a person is charged for a crime in a criminal court, there is a sense of justice that has been done, but the injured person and their family is still left severely hurt financially without any help for medical bills or other forms of suffering. The injured party may also choose to pursue a civil personal injury case if the defendant was cleared of charges in a criminal court. This is a way of trying your chances in court again without going against double jeopardy laws.

Perhaps the most famous example of this was with the extremely high profile case of the double homicide involving pro football player OJ Simpson. Simpson was acquitted of murder in a criminal court but the families of the victims sued him separately in a civil wrongful death case and the jury decided he was guilty and thus ordered to pay the families of the deceased a large sum of money. The Simpson case really opened up this type of double trial to a larger audience.

It is not uncommon now for both a criminal and a civil suit to be pursued-sometimes at the same time-by the victim or family of the victim of a crime. But in order to win a personal injury case, the plaintiff has the burden of proof. In other words, the plaintiff must prove by a “preponderance of evidence” that the defendant was at fault for the plaintiff’s injuries.

The claim for injury can fall into three categories: * Intentional misconduct * Negligence * Strict liability To find out more about the burden of proof and personal injury cases, visit the website of the Champaign personal injury lawyers of Spiros & Wall, P.C. today.

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