When An Injury Is Personal

Many years ago, I worked as a legal assistant. I was a young mother at the time and going to school to work as a paralegal. 

It was incredibly interesting and exhausting at the same time. 

The attorney I worked directly under took on a lot of personal injury cases. These cases were sometimes so heartbreaking, I didn't think I would be able to separate my emotional mind and logical mind.

According to HG.org's Legal Resources:

"Most personal injury cases are based on the doctrine of negligence. In essence, negligence requires every member of society to act responsibly and avoid putting others at risk. That is not to say that negligence will result each time someone gets hurt. The doctrine recognizes that some accidents are unavoidable. To establish liability, the plaintiff must show that a reasonably prudent person in the defendant’s position would have acted differently under the circumstances. 

Examples of negligence include car accidents caused by drunk drivers, medical complications resulting from a physician’s carelessness, and dog bites that occur when vicious animals are permitted to roam free. In each instance, the responsible party ignored the risk posed to others, and as a result, the plaintiff was injured."

The American Bar Association also notes that other definitions of personal injury besides negligence are strict liability and intentional wrongs:

"Strict liability is an important and growing area of tort law. It holds designers and manufacturers strictly liable for injuries from defective products. In these cases, the injured person does not have to establish negligence of the manufacturer. Rather, you need to show that the product was designed or manufactured in a manner that made it unreasonably dangerous when used as intended.

Intentional wrongs can also be the basis of personal injury claims, though they are rarer. If someone hits you, for example, even as a practical joke, you may be able to win a suit for battery. Or if a store detective wrongly detains you for shoplifting, you may be able to win a suit for false imprisonment. While perpetrators of some of the intentional torts—assault and battery, for example—can be held criminally liable for their actions, a tort case is a civil proceeding in court brought by an individual or entity and remains totally separate from any criminal charges brought by the government."

Because of our military life at the time, I ended up leaving the firm as my husband was assigned a new duty station and we moved away. I can not go into specifics on the cases I was involved in working, but there were a lot of injuries involving children that still haunt me today. 

I can only imagine the toll it takes on the attorneys who handle these cases. I began to wonder how they could reach out to their community to help in other ways. To the Google!

I found a Tampa area personal injury attorney practice that is heavily involved with the Make A Wish Foundation of Southern Florida. Not only are they committed to their clients, they are committed to their community in a wonderful way! 

Personal injuries go unreported in a lot of instances and that is truly a shame. Having worked and studied in the legal field, I know for a fact that these attorneys do everything they can for not only their clients but their community as well. Should you ever find yourself (unfortunately) the victim of a personal injury, I implore you to reach out to a personal injury attorney in your area. Know your rights, and use them. You really don't have to suffer. There is always help available!