The Boston Personal Injury
By Dell Radish
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
The 1980s was the era of mass personal injury litigation. Hundreds of thousands of people sued scores of corporations for losses due to injuries or diseases that they attributed to catastrophic events, pharmaceutical products, medical devices, or toxic substances. Businesses and their insurers paid billions of dollars in indemnification; insurance, defense, and plaintiffs' lawyers received billions more. The specter of mass liability frightened insurers from some markets and manufacturers from research and development in some product lines.
A personal injury generally generally results in what is called a Tort.
Understand that torts are civil wrongs recognized by the law as grounds for a lawsuit. These wrongs must result in an injury or harm of some sort that constitutes the basis for a claim by an injured party.
While some torts are also sometimes crimes punishable with imprisonment, the primary aim of tort law is to provide relief for the damages incurred and deter others from committing the same thing to someone else.
The injured person may sue for an injunction to prevent the continuation of the negligent conduct or frequently for monetary damages. Among the types of damages the injured party may recover are: loss of earnings capacity, pain and suffering, and reasonable medical expenses. Such claims typically include both present and future expected losses.
There are numerous specific torts and they include things like trespassing, assault, battery, negligence, products liability, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Torts fall into three general categories. The first category are called intentional torts, which might be an intentional injury inflicting on another party. This might be an assault like hitting somebody or even giving an attack command to a dog.
Secondly there are negligent torts. This could include a car accident or leaving a pool gate open or similar form of negligence and...
Finally, there are strict liability torts, like deliberately selling something that you know is dangerous, like a faulty ladder or exploding toaster.
Intentional torts happen when a defendant knew or should have known would occur through their actions or inactions. Negligent torts occur when the defendant's actions were unreasonably unsafe. Strict liability wrongs do not depend on the degree of carefulness by the defendant, but are established when a particular action causes some sort of damage.
