Hair Relaxer/Straightener Litigation Attorneys

A personal injury action is a civil lawsuit that seeks to recover compensation for the harm caused, either physically, mentally, or emotionally, by another’s negligence. Personal injury lawsuits provide a way for victims of preventable accidents to recover compensation for damages like medical bills, lost wages, property damage, and more. In order to be successful, the plaintiff (the injured person bringing the lawsuit) needs to prove that the actions or inaction of the defendant (the person accused of negligence) were to blame for their accident.

According to research conducted by Earth.org, upwards of 90% of all wildfires in California are caused by negligence, such as poor powerline maintenance by power companies. An investigation from NPR was able to pin at least 30 destructive wildfires on PG&E since 2017.

In order to file a personal injury case for negligence, you must meet the four following criteria:

• Duty – In order to successfully bring a case against a defendant, the plaintiff must show that the law imposed a “duty” on the defendant to act a certain way. This “duty” is an obligation to act as a “reasonable person” would act, and courts have illustrated how a “reasonable person” would act in a variety of specific circumstances. For example, a manufacturer of a product has a “duty” not to release products that can foreseeably cause harm to consumers.
• Breach – This requirement simply means that a defendant must have failed to act as a reasonable person would have acted in his or her circumstances, and thereby breached his or her duty.
• Harm – This requirement merely means that the plaintiff must have suffered some kind of real harm, physical, financial, emotional, etc.
• Causation – This requirement means that a defendant’s breach of duty must have caused the plaintiff harm. There are two types of causation that typically must be shown: 1) actual causation, meaning that, but for the defendant’s breach, the plaintiff’s harm would not have occurred, and 2) proximate causation, meaning that the link between the defendant’s breach and the plaintiff’s harm must not be ‘stretched too thin’ by intervening events or other factors.

To fully understand your rights after suffering an injury, contact Kershaw Talley Barlow at (916) 520-6639. Our Sacramento personal injury attorneys can provide you with a free case evaluation.

We recommend contacting a lawyer as soon as possible if you were injured in a car wreck. An attorney can advise you on what to say to the at-fault party's insurance company, help you collect evidence to support your claim, and ensure you receive the medical care you need. On top of that, California's statute of limitations for personal injury claims is only two years and you will want to give your lawyer as much time as possible in case you decide to file a lawsuit.

The majority of civil cases filed are personal injury tort cases where a plaintiff is seeking monetary damages for an injury sustained by another person’s negligence. These lawsuits are brought for various reasons, such as motor vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, or defective products.

Many civil cases can be resolved without going to trial through an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process, such as arbitration or mediation. Arbitration and mediation bring together the persons involved in the lawsuit in an informal setting. The goal is to reach a fair resolution without incurring the time and expense of trial.

While there is no exact national data, the U.S. Department of Justice reports about 4% of all personal injury cases filed nationally actually go to trial. The majority of personal injury cases are resolved in either settlements or dismissals before trial is even assigned.