What is Negligence?

The term “negligence” is used regularly when discussing personal injury cases. What is negligence, and more importantly – what are the keys to a negligence case?

Negligence is a legal term that means not being careful and hurting someone else. Negligence is seen in everyday situations like driving and working at your job. Ordinarily careful people follow established safety rules and take actions to protect themselves and others around them. When these safety rules are broken, and the result is harm to others, very often a personal injury suit is appropriate.

Examples of Negligence

A negligent or careless act can take place in almost any day-to-day setting. There is no limit to the list of injuries that can occur as a result of negligent acts. When evaluating an accident for negligence, the attorneys at McCraw Law Group ask: Did the person involved act carelessly or did the person act as a careful and prudent person would act under the circumstances? Did the person choose to ignore a safety rule or standard that would have prevented the injury? Some examples of negligence in routine scenarios:

• Automotive Negligence: Running stop signs, driving recklessly or DUI/DWI, ignoring safety zones, speeding, driving without proper training and/or identification, paying attention to a mobile device instead of paying attention to the road ahead.
• Job Site Negligence: Choosing not to comply with OSHA standards, lack of training, improper storage of toxic chemicals and waste, unmarked gas and power lines, poorly maintained tools and equipment.
• Medical Negligence: Choosing not to check twice before giving medicine, hiding relevant medical records documenting harm, choosing to play God rather than get qualified help when an unexpected event occurs; Simply not listening or paying attention to clear signs of distress.
• Food Service Negligence: Poor handling of raw foods, ignoring with health codes, choosing not to clean food handling areas, creating dangerous fall potentials inside the food establishment.
• 18 Wheeler Negligence: More than just poor driving, but creating the condition where dangerous driving is tolerated or even encouraged; falsifying driving logs to allow exhausted driving; ignoring FMVS safety standards; hiring drivers with poor driving records; turning a blind eye to truck or trailer maintenance as is required by federal law; choosing to load an 18 wheeler in a way that the load can shift or even turn over the trailer.

This is a condensed list of some common examples of negligence. McCraw Law Group has experienced many different cases of personal injury that stem from negligent acts like those listed above.

Keys to a Negligence Case

The primary focus after an accident is your recovery. Visiting doctors and rehabilitation facilities to help repair injuries is most important thing for you to do. Our attorneys will focus on obtaining fair compensation for your injuries so you can focus on getting better. We can use some or all of the following basic principles to help determine negligence in your injury case.

• Key 1: If another was careless, what safety standards or rule were violated that a careful person under the circumstances would have followed? The more basic or intuitive the safety rule that was violated, the more that the safety rule is basic common sense, the greater the negligence.
• Key 2: Not only what harms and losses were caused, but what were the potential harms and losses? How bad could it have been? Who else could have been harmed? The greater the potential harms and losses from the action, the greater the negligence.
• Key 3: Who all else is potentially responsible for the harms and losses. Sometimes multiple folks make poor safety choices at the same time that create or enhance danger. When that happens we often must weigh the poor choices and determine who is responsible for what injuries or are those injuries full the responsibility of both parties.
• Key 4: Last of all, did the injured person make a mistake that also led to the injury. If so, what is the degree of responsibility between the parties. Texas law will reduce an injured person’s recovery by their own degree of negligence. Further, if the injured person is more than 50% at fault for the injury, the injured person would recover nothing.

McCraw Law Group will work to apply these key principles to your personal injury case when negotiating a settlement or taking your case to court. The specific details of each case are important, but the guiding questions remains: Did the party involved act with negligence? If the answer to this question is yes, then contact our law firm today for assistance.