Negligence is often the cause of personal injury accidents in Oregon. While some physical harm results from intentional and even criminal conduct, many of the car accidents, property incidents, and other types of injury-causing events happen because people fail to exercise reasonable care. Negligence happens when an individual does not act as a reasonable person would in their given circumstances and the situation that they are in.
First, however, before the reasonableness of a person’s conduct may be assessed, a victim must show that the person who hurt them owed them a duty. Individuals pretty much owe each other a duty to act in a safe manner, and by acting negligently a victim may claim that the other party breached their duty. Duty, breach of duty, and causation are all necessary elements of a negligence claim.
Causation involves linking a victim’s injuries to the actions of another party. If causation can be established, a victim must also plead that they suffered harm as a result of the other’s negligence. Physical pain and injury is often sufficient to demonstrate the losses that a victim endured in a personal injury accident.
In a negligence claim based on a personal injury a victim must finally request damages to compensate them for what they lost. Damages can be used to pay for medical care, lost wages, other forms of suffering, and many other types of losses. This general outline of a negligence claim is provided to readers of this Oregon personal injury law blog as information only and should not be used as legal advice in individual personal injury claims.