The person that makes a personal injury claim must prove that the defendant failed to carry out a duty of care, and thus caused harm to the claimant/plaintiff. In the absence of such proof, the claim becomes groundless.
Evidence that can aid a determination of who to blame for a given accident
The facts stated in the police report: If that report contains false information, the driver that discovers the mistake has the right to contest the report’s contents. Obviously, it helps to have the support of a lawyer, if you find it necessary to question the contents of a police report.
The information shared by an impartial witness: Someone that was a passenger in one of the involved vehicles does not qualify as an impartial witness. The nature of the accident: Usually, if a car gets rear-ended, the driver that caused the rear-end impact should be blamed for the collision. If a car gets dented on the side, it is almost impossible to imagine how that same car’s driver could have caused the dent-creating collision.
The liability might be split between 2 or more drivers.
That is often the case in a parking lot, where one driver collides with another, typically as both drivers are trying to leave or to enter a particular parking space. Sometimes an older and more experienced driver tries to convince a younger and less-experienced one that the lack of experience led to poor judgement, and thus caused the collision. Such an allegation can be fought with the assistance of a personal injury lawyer in Pleasant Hill.
Suppose 2 drivers make an illegal U-turn at the same time, along the same route. Then suppose those same 2 drivers collide with each other. In that case, each of them would bear a portion of the blame. In other words, the law is of the view that only one person must bear the blame.
The role that contributory evidence plays in a determination of who to blame
Contributory negligence can suggest that a neglectful victim did something that caused an injury to be worse than it might have been. Evidence that a victim was not wearing a seat belt counts as contributory negligence. In the face of such evidence, the victim’s compensation gets reduced.
Similarly, a driver that has stopped to use a cell phone could be called an example of contributory negligence, if another driver hit that same driver’s car from the rear. The driver that caused the impact could have the required compensation reduced, due to the other driver’s careless and neglectful behavior.
A third example of contributory negligence might be found in the actions of a parent. Suppose the parent of a short 8-year-old allowed that child to use a standard seat belt, even though he or she was shorter than required by law. If the same parent was driving when the car got hit, then the parent could be charged with contributory negligence.