Texas Injury Claim Eligibility

Our San Antonio Injury Attorneys Answer the Question “Can I File a Personal Injury Claim?”

Knowing what to do in the aftermath of suffering an injury caused by an accident can be difficult, especially if you’ve never been in such a situation before.

Many people are actually unaware that they have certain legal options that can be pursued so that they can be compensated for the financial losses they’ll accrue as a result of sustaining an injury. Even injured victims that know they have these legal options may still be unsure as to whether or not their claim may have merit. The following short article helps to answer the question, “Can I file a personal injury claim?”

Essentially, three aspects must have existed, or suspected to have existed, in connection to the accident causing your injury: injury, legal duty and violation, and damages.

You Must Have Experienced Some Type of Injury

While such an injury is, more often than not, a physical injury like a broken arm or a severe laceration, such injuries can also be mental or emotional in nature. Often, physical injuries are accompanied by emotional or mental duress, and these types of unseen injuries are also accounted for in the process of seeking compensation through a personal injury lawsuit. However, certain situations, like a devastating car wreck that leaves a victim without a visible injury, can result in severe mental or emotional trauma, and a personal injury lawsuit can be sought for such an injury in the same way that a physically harmed victim in the same type of auto accident could file a claim.

A Liable Party Must Have Violated the Legal Duty They Owed to You

While there can be multiple liable parties at fault for the same accident, each liable party must be proven to have violated a legal duty they owed to you. More often than not, the legal duty owed in connection to personal injury cases in Texas is that of public safety. For example, every driver on Texas roads owes every other driver a legal duty to drive safely so as to not cause harm to others on the road. When one person’s reckless driving causes them to crash into another person, resulting in the second person’s injury, then the legal duty owed by the first driver to the second driver is said to have been violated. If such a person was drunk at the time of the accident, Texas dram shop law would also hold a negligent alcohol-serving establishment partially liable for the wreck since the bar or restaurant also violated their legal duty to prevent such patrons from becoming intoxicated and thus becoming a public hazard. While assessing a legal duty is sometimes straightforward, especially in regards to a majority of auto accident personal injury cases, other cases are not so black-and-white and will require the work of an experienced San Antonio personal injury accident attorney to be able to show what legal duty was owed and how that duty was violated.

You Must Have Incurred Some Type of Financial Loss as a Result of the Injury

In the legal realm, these financial losses are known as damages. If no damages have been incurred, then no personal injury lawsuit can be sought since the point of a personal injury civil suit is for the plaintiff to be compensated by the defendant for the damages the plaintiff has incurred due to the defendant’s negligent behavior. Damages can include a wide variety of issues like medical bills, lost wages, loss of future earning potential, property damage costs, and pain and suffering.

If you have reason to believe that these three aspects existed in connection to the accident that caused your injury, you likely have merit in pursuing a personal injury lawsuit in San Antonio, Texas. Contact our San Antonio injury lawyers at 1-855-393-0000 for a toll-free consultation where we can help you assess the merit of seeking legal action against the party or parties responsible for your injury.