Claiming the Damage – A Guide to Recover from Personal Injury

by Max Renouf

The Different Types of Personal Injury

The important question to ask here is 'When do personal injury cases typically arise'? Personal injury cases arise when there are two parties involved and one party has been negligent in carrying out his duty, thereby causing injury to the other. Personal injuries can occur any environment and under various circumstances. A person who has suffered from one of these various kinds of personal accidents must understand where he stands in the eyes of the law and how he can proceed to claim damages.

The first thing that typically comes to mind when you think of injury, is all types of physical injury caused to the human body, such as broken bones for example. Personal injury however, covers a much wider area. While the aforementioned example is also a form of personal accidents, there are other types such as psychiatric injury, financial injury, and also injury to ones reputation.

Financial injury involves the loss of income and expenses incurred as a result of physical injury being suffered. It may also include situations where your income is threatened due to acts of negligence by a person under other circumstances and may even relate to land. Injury to ones reputation includes cases of slander and defamation that may have an effect on a person's standing in the community.

Your personal injury lawsuit need not fall into only ONE specific group; it may well include a combination of different types of personal injury.

Who is Responsible?

Once you have identified what group of personal injury your claim will fall under, the next step would be to see who you can make a claim against. In most cases, claims of personal accidents are made against either an employer or a health practitioner. In the case of the former, this is where an employee has suffered an injury as a result of an accident that took place in his/her workplace. The latter includes situations regarding medical negligence, where the negligent act of a doctor has resulted in the patient suffering even further.
Although the above examples are most common, depending on your situation and the injury you've suffered, you may be entitled to make a claim against a statutory body, certain recreational places, a school, and supermarket and so on.

Identify who is responsible primarily, for the injury that you have suffered and then start negotiation regarding compensation.
You may also be able to make a claim against third parties, if they too have been responsible in some way for your injury.

Time Limits

Take note that there is a time period within which you must make your claim for compensation. This is typically a specified number of months from the date of the injury and differs according to the state you live in. You would need to issue your proceedings within this period.

Damages

The damages received will be in the form of monetary compensation for the injury. This will be for any loss suffered as a result of permanent / temporary injury or any other expenses incurred.

About the Author

yatt Attorneys also provide Personal Injury Lawyers in Sydney. wyatt Attorneys are a professional Law Firm in Sydney.