Car accidents can have a pretty large impact on your life, especially if you have some pretty large bills to deal with. Auto repair bills can get pretty high, as can the cost of expensive medical treatment. Fortunately, there is a way that you can get some help with those costs: a lawsuit. To help you figure out if a lawsuit is right for you, here are some of the specific rules that you will need to abide by when it comes to filing in Arizona:
Comparative Fault and Proportionally Reduced Compensation
Every state says that you should be punished if you were partially to blame for your injuries. However, states can disagree quite a bit when it comes to figuring out exactly how that blame should be applied and how much leeway should be given.
Arizona is a very lenient state, following a doctrine known as pure comparative fault. In short, your compensation will be reduced relative to the amount of responsibility that you bore. If you were 50% responsible for your injuries, then you will only get half of the money that you asked for. If you were 25% responsible, then you would only get 75% and so on.
Other states are much stricter, enforcing rules that would completely negate your compensation if your level of responsibility surpassed a specific threshold. In many states, this is around 50%, but some states will eliminate any chance at compensation if you are even 1% responsible for your injuries (which is known as contributory negligence).
At-Fault Insurance and Which Accidents Qualify For Lawsuits
When specifically dealing with an auto accident, you need to know whether you are in a fault or no-fault state. Arizona is a fault state, which means a couple of important things.
Fault states allow you to file an insurance claim or a lawsuit for any accident. Regardless of how much you were injured and how much money you lost, you can file a lawsuit.
This contrasts with no-fault states, where you cannot file a lawsuit unless you were severely injured in the accident. This sounds harsh, but no-fault states also tend to file insurance claims faster than other states when it comes to auto accidents.
For you, this means that you have a number of options going forward. You can file a lawsuit or file an insurance claim. However, your insurance claim might get bogged down and could potentially result in less total compensation, so a lawsuit could potentially be a much more attractive option.
Click here for more info on what to do if you are in an accident.
Share28 March 2016
Defective products are produced and sold to consumers all of the time. Unfortunately, some of these defective products cause consumers injuries when they malfunction. So, what can you do if a defective product causes you or someone that you love some kind of injury? This blog will show you how the legal system works to protect consumers from instances such as this. You will find out about personal injury lawsuits and what it takes to file and proceed with a lawsuit to hold the company that manufactured that defective product responsible for the role that they played in the pain that has been experienced.