The injury lawyer for the defendant seeks to decrease the size of the compensation that will be owed to the plaintiff. In order to achieve that goal, the same injury lawyer focuses on any piece of evidence that might be of help. Such evidence usually suggests one of three different possibilities.
Possibilities focused on by arguments made by defense team
• Did the plaintiff have a role in causing the accident?
• Did the plaintiff fail to seek proper medical care?
• Was the plaintiff’s initiation of a personal injury claim made within the statute of limitations?
The first two of those 3 possibilities will be explained in detail in the following paragraphs.
If the plaintiff had a role in causing the accident, then the effect of that misdirected behavior would depend on the location of that same accidental occurrence. If it occurred in a state that followed the rules for pure comparative negligence, then the size of the decrease in the awarded compensation would equal the percent of the total negligence that had come from plaintiff’s behavior.
If the accidental occurrence transpired in a state that recognized the rules for modified comparative negligence, then the size of the plaintiff’s award would be the same, as long as it did not fall below a certain threshold. If it fell below that threshold, no reward would be offered, due to the level of the plaintiff’s negligence. The plaintiff’s award would also be of no consequence, if the accident took place in a state that followed the rules for contributory negligence.
How could failure to seek proper medical care affect the size of the plaintiff’s compensation?
In this case, the defense would have to do a bit of research, in order to estimate the extent of the damaging injury during the hours or days before the plaintiff visited a doctor. Based on that information, the Injury Lawyer in Mississauga for the defendant would need to calculate the amount of damage that could have been avoided by seeing the doctor at an earlier date. The calculated figure would indicate what percent of the compensation should be held back from the victimized plaintiff.
Parents that have children on some sports team should be mindful of the way that lack of proper medical attention can affect the size of an awarded settlement. If a child were to get injured during play and then agree to keep playing the parents would pay the price for such ill-founded enthusiasm. Coaches must learn to keep an injured player on the bench until a doctor can exam the injury. At a practice session, an injured player should be allowed to rest until an adult has agreed to take the same youth to a clinic or hospital.
