Every personal injury case requires two factors: negligence and damages that have been proximately caused by that negligence. If either factor is missing, you simply do not have a case worth pursuing.

Motor Vehicle/Trucking occurrences: What is Negligence? Simply put it is "lack of ordinary care." It is a breach of a duty imposed by law to exercise ordinary care to protect oneself and others from injury or damage. It is the lack of ordinary care that is followed by reasonably prudent persons given the same or similar circumstances to protect themselves and others from personal injury. A perfect example is a driver running a stoplight. That driver did something that normal reasonably prudent people do not when operating their motor vehicles. Furthermore, most states have promulgated laws that when violated can be used as evidence of negligence. Failing to follow vehicle and traffic laws that pertain to rules of the road, reckless driving, failing to yield etc. can all be evidence of negligence.

Proximate Cause: This is the cause, which in a natural and continuous sequence produces injury or damage, and is a cause, which a reasonably prudent person could have foreseen would produce injury or damage. There may be more than one proximate cause of a personal injury. At trial all that need be proved is that the defendant's negligence was a cause of the injury—not the sole cause of the injury.

Medical/Nursing Home Malpractice: Medical Malpractice and Nursing Home Abuse and Malpractice claims have some differences but usually they involve doctors and health care providers and are therefore governed by statutes and case law. In North Carolina, one of the statutes that govern is NCGS 90-21.12. It provides essentially, that in order to have a viable malpractice case, a person must show that the healthcare provider deviated from the standard of care that is followed by members of the same health care profession with similar training and experience located in the same or similar communities at the time of the act giving rise to the cause of action. In practice this requires hiring experts in the same field as the defendant to review the care that was given and testify in Court that the defendant not only breached the standard of care, but that the breach also was a proximate cause of personal injury or damage. Medical and Nursing Home Malpractice cases can be very complex, expensive to pursue, and time consuming. It is vitally important to screen these cases and properly prepare them before they are ever filed in Court. In fact a lawyer must allege in the Complaint, the very first document filed in Court, that the healthcare has been reviewed by an expert who will reasonably qualify as an expert and that the expert will testify as to deviations from the standard of care causing the plaintiff injury or damage. (See case examples page)

Other types of personal injury cases: There are all types of negligence cases such as motorcycle accidents, slip and falls, construction accidents, dog bites, pedestrian accidents, boating accidents, longshoreman injuries, recreational accidents, industrial accidents, civil assault and battery, premises liability cases, chemical exposure cases, spinal and brain injury cases, ... really too numerous to list.

Please refer to the limited case specific examples to get an idea of the types of negligence cases that we handle. This list is by no means exhaustive but rather posted as an example of fact patterns that have exhibited some of the legal concepts referred to above.