Liability refers to legal responsibility for some kind of harm that the law can compensate you for. Usually, but not always, the liable party is the one that caused your injuries in personal injury cases. You may be entitled to damages if you can prove that someone else is responsible for causing your harm.
Types of Liability
There are four main theories of liability in personal injury cases: negligence, strict liability, vicarious liability, and intentional torts.
Negligence
In a negligence case, your aim is to prove that the defendant failed to uphold a duty of care they owed you, which resulted in your damages. From a formal legal perspective, you must prove the following:
- Duty of Care: The defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care (e.g., a doctor-patient relationship).
- Breach of Duty: The defendant violated the duty of care they owed the plaintiff.
- Causation: The defendant’s negligence caused the plaintiff’s harm (e.g., They hit you with their car while you were walking across a crosswalk.).
- Damages: The defendant caused the plaintiff’s injuries.
Proving all four of these elements is required for a negligence claim to be successful.
Strict Liability
Strict liability holds a person or company responsible for causing harm even if they did not intend to or were not at fault. For instance, imagine a pharmaceutical company sells a drug that was defectively manufactured by its supplier. The defect in the drug causes harm to consumers. Even though the pharmaceutical company didn’t manufacture the drug itself, it can still be held strictly liable for the injuries caused by the defect because it is responsible for the products it distributes.
Vicarious Liability
Vicarious liability arises when one party is liability for the actions of another. The concept of vicarious liability may seem counterintuitive, but it is applicable in many cases.
- Respondeat Superior: An employer is responsible for an employee’s misconduct within the scope of their employment.
- Negligent Hiring, Supervision, and Retention: An employer can be held liable if they did not do their due diligence when choosing to hire and retain an employee despite their incompetence.
- Negligent Entrustment: An example is entrusting the operation of a dangerous instrumentality, such as a car, to someone you know is incapable of operating it.
- Parent-Child Relationship: Parents can sometimes bear liability for the willful and malicious conduct of their children.
Much of what motivates vicarious liability claims is the search for a defendant who can actually afford to pay a judgment against them.
Intentional Torts
When a defendant commits an intentional tort, they act in a way so as to intentionally cause someone’s harm. Assault, battery, and false imprisonment are all examples of intentional torts.
Damages
Liability means nothing without damages. Below are descriptions of the three major kinds of personal injury damages that a court might impose in response to the defendant’s liability.
Economic Damages
Economic damages refer to almost any losses you can easily quantify while you recover from your injury — medical bills, lost wages, and babysitting expenses.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages refer to intangible, subjective losses that are more difficult to calculate, such as:
- Pain and suffering
- Loss of consortium
- Emotional distress
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Disfigurement
Non-economic damages frequently amount to far more than economic damages.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages are unique because courts rarely award them. Courts award economic damages and non-economic damages to compensate the plaintiff for their losses. By contrast, punitive damages are awarded by courts that want to punish a defendant for particularly bad behavior (e.g., causing an accident due to road rage).
The defendant’s conduct must be intentional, malicious, or grossly reckless to qualify for punitive damages. Oklahoma caps punitive damages based on the severity of the offense. However, there is no cap on damages for the most serious offenses.
Property Damage
In most personal injury cases, property damage refers to damage to a vehicle. However, any tangible item that carries economic value can be subject to a personal injury claim. Courts typically treat property based on its economic value, not its sentimental value.
Comparative Negligence
Courts use comparative negligence to distribute liability when more than one party was at fault. In a typical car accident, there are at least two parties involved. A court might distribute liability among multiple parties in certain other types of accidents, such as mass torts.
Oklahoma uses a modified comparative negligence system with a 51% bar. That means that, as long as you are 50% or less responsible for the accident, you can recover compensation according to your percentage of fault. If you were 15% at fault, for example, you would lose 15% of your damages.
Call a personal injury lawyer today to schedule a free consultation if you believe someone is liable for your injuries.