TORT AND LITIGATION

Tort and litigation



Tort and litigation

Part1

Tort litigation refers to a civil lawsuit that one individual brings against another. Tort litigation allows a person to recover monetary damages for injuries that a defendant causes by negligent or intentional behavior. It is distinct from criminal litigation, and there are different rules and burdens of proof.

Tort law is a body of law relating to civil wrongs, or wrongs that one person commits against another. Tort law exists in common law jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland and Ireland. Tort law is primarily comprised of judge-made law, or case law that was created over years of judicial decisions in these common law jurisdictions.

Juliets vehicle had broke down on a busy road. She was forced to walk from her car in order to try to get some assistance. Tragically an articulated lorry was coming along the road and knocked her over.

She was extremely badly injured and sustained fractures throughout her body. More importantly, she also sustained a complete tear to her brachial plexus which is the network of nerves connecting the arm to the trunk and the spine. As a result of her injury she effectively lost the use of her dominant right arm. As you can imagine this has had a profound effect upon our client. She was in hospital for several weeks as a result of this accident and when she returned home she gave us a telephone call.

As it would have been very difficult for our client to get into the office, we visited her at home to take details of her accident. We took full instructions and despite the fact that this was a very complicated claim managed to secure an admission of liability from the third party insurers within a month.

We immediately appreciated that our client was going to be in a great deal of financial difficulty as a result of this accident. That turned out to be the case as she fell into severe difficulty in meeting regular rental payments on her home. She was working part time prior to this accident.

We obtained medical evidence from our client within six months of the date of the injury and this was sent to the insurers. We then proceeded to obtain several other medical reports to include the following:

Consultant Orthopaedic report (to deal with the bone injuries)

Consultant Neurosurgeon's report (to deal with the injury to the brachial plexus - the most serious injury)

Consultant Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon's report (to deal with the scarring that our client sustained)

Consultant Psychiatrist's report (to deal with the psychiatric injuries that our client sustained as a result)

The fact that we obtained early medical evidence for our client meant that we were able to secure interim payments for her. This enabled her to meet her financial commitment for the next year or two. Our client received the better part of £70,000 during this period which in fact would probably have been greater than the sum she would have recovered ...