When an accident occurs, it may be clear to the injured victim that another party was responsible for the losses they suffered. In Illinois, a person may bring a personal injury lawsuit against another individual if that individual caused the victim to suffer harm. Negligence is often the basis on which personal injury claims are built and this post will briefly discuss the elements of negligence that must exist in order for a victim to prevail on these claims.
One of the first elements of negligence that a victim must tackle is duty. Individuals owe each other a requisite duty of care when they are out on public roads, working in or near public places or in locations where others may be harmed by their actions. For example, drivers generally owe to others on the roads a duty of care of a reasonable driver. If the injury-causing action occurred in a context in which the negligent party owed the victim a duty, then the victim may be able to satisfy the first requirement of the negligence claim.
Next, the victim must show that the other party breached the duty and that the breach of the duty was the cause of the losses. In the case of a car accident, for example, a driver who runs a red light and collides with another car in the intersection may breach their duty of reasonableness by failing to stop at the signal and their collision may be shown to have caused the victim’s injuries.
Injuries and other losses must be included in a victim’s negligence claim. If they have truly lost nothing in an accident, there is nothing for the courts to compensate them for. To this end, victims of negligence-based accidents can benefit from utilizing the services of personal injury attorneys to ensure that they have properly met the various elements of the negligence claim they have made against another person.