Negligence 101

Eric Reyes has been concentrating on personal injury negligence cases since he earned his law license in 1988. Mr. Reyes has never represented a company or a perpetrator of negligence against the victim.

Negligence is conduct which violates a legal duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent injury to another person. The victim must prove that the adverse party was negligent and that the negligence was the proximate cause of any injury. For example, in a motor vehicle accident the adverse party is the other driver who fails to maintain a proper look out and collides into the rear of your vehicle. The negligence is the failure by the adverse party to exercise ordinary care to maintain a proper lookout and apply his brakes timely. The proximate cause of the injuries is the collision between the vehicles and the damages are the injuries, medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, mental anguish and physical impairment.

Under our system of civil justice when the negligent driver’s insurance company pays a fair value for the damages suffered by the victim then at that point in time the victim is made “whole” again. This is a fiction of course because no amount of money can erase the memories of pain and suffering and disfigurement and other damages. However this is the only method that we have in our society to compensate a victim of negligence when they have suffered injuries as result of someone’s conduct. These basic rules of negligence apply to relationships between two drivers involved in an accident, an employer and employee in a on-the-job injury, a patient and a doctor in a medical malpractice case, a business patron and a store in a slip and fall case, and a customer of a product and the manufacturer of that product in a product liability case. The areas of law that the Reyes Law Firm P.C. limits their practice concern negligence between parties in these relationships and others.

If you believe that you have been a victim of negligence please contact our office for a free consultation regarding your rights and remedies.