You Should Not Feel Bad If You Have To File a Lawsuit
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Summary: People often have misconceptions or even feel guilty about what it means to name someone in a lawsuit, especially if the person they sue is a friend, a previously trusted professional, or someone they know or respect.
However, there is no reason to feel badly about filing a legitimate lawsuit for personal injuries. A personal injury or medical malpractice claim is simply the tool someone uses when they are owed money for the costs of their injury. Our society has set up this system to compensate those who have incurred damages and costs that include medical and rehabilitative bills, lost wages, and loss of life’s pleasures due to pain and suffering.
The concept of people being responsible financially for the negligent injuries they cause to another goes back to biblical times. Even the concept “an eye for an eye” was never enforced literally but rather mean monetary compensation for injury.
The person or company being sued is unlikely to have to pay directly, as it is the insurance company that will cover the claim for damages. And since insurance companies often will not make offers of compensation that are fair and reasonable to get a claim settled, filing a lawsuit is often the best way to put an end to tactics insurance companies use of delaying and denying in order to pay out as little as possible.
Personal injury attorneys should not take on a case unless there is a good reason to sue a person or a company. This means the party has been negligent or done something wrong that resulted in your injury and that you have suffered damages as a result of this behavior. For example, if a company has produced a dangerous product or a person has done something dangerous like driving drunk or running a red light and smashed into another vehicle, they should be responsible for compensating the injured party. Negligence may be more subtle. Today, many collisions are caused by inappropriate cell phone use.
What Does Compensation Cover?
Personal injury involves emotional and physical injuries to a person caused by someone else's negligence. In Pennsylvania, losses you can be compensated for in a lawsuit fall into two categories: economic damages and non-economic damages.
- Economic damages – expenses which can be objectively calculated, such as past, present and future medical, hospital, therapy, and rehabilitation costs, costs of equipment such as wheelchairs, lost income, future lost income, property damage, and funeral and burial costs if a death is involved.
- Non-economic damages – may include pain and suffering, disfigurement, emotional distress, loss of life’s pleasures until the end of the person’s life, and the loss of society and services including sex, which is called “consortium.”
How Is Fault Determined in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Determining fault requires proving another party was negligent in causing your injury. This means:
- The person or company had a responsibility not to injure you but failed to live up to that responsibility;
- There is a causal connection between the other party's responsibility and your injury; and
- You suffered harm as a result of the collision as indicated above.
If you share some degree of liability, it will probably affect the amount of compensation you can receive, as Pennsylvania has a “modified comparative negligence rule.” Compensation is reduced by an amount equal to your percentage of fault, and if you are more than 50 percent at fault, you cannot collect anything from other at-fault parties.
The concept of joint and several liability, which is very complex, may also come into play and be very important in the case of multiple parties being responsible for the harm suffered.
There is no limitation on the amount of damages you can receive in cases involving injury and death except for a cap on punitive damages, which are imposed only in extreme cases to punish a wrongdoer. This cap is two times the amount of actual damages only in medical malpractice cases; otherwise there is no cap.
Time Limits on Personal Injury Lawsuits
Pennsylvania subscribes to the discovery rule, which under certain limited circumstances will toll (stop) the running of the statute of limitations. There are also other ways to stop the running of the statute of limitations, such as the filing of a writ of summons. If the injury claim is against city, county or state government, there is a requirement to file a 6-month notice of intent to sue. There may be circumstances under which this notice will not preclude a lawsuit. The statute of limitations is a very complex matter. You should never take a chance with respect to the statute of limitations. You should obtain legal help soon. Under many circumstances, if a case is not filed in a timely fashion, either the statute of limitations, statute of repose, or some other prohibition may bar you from filing a claim or receiving compensation.
Consult an Attorney
The insurance companies are always happy when individuals delay making claims, so it pays to consult an experienced personal injury attorney as soon as possible after being injured. Every case is different and will be decided on its merits, and an experienced attorney will provide guidance as to your legal options and whether or not you should sue.
Attorneys often provide a free initial consultation to discuss the individual facts of your case. Typically, in personal injury cases, you will not have to lay out any money, as payment is on a contingency fee agreement. Attorneys often lay out the costs for filing the case and do not get paid until a settlement is reached. At that time, the attorney gets a percentage of the settlement funds.
