Do I have a personal injury claim?
Massachusetts personal injury law provides that in order to prevail against the person who caused your injury, your personal injury attorney must prove the following elements by a preponderance of the evidence (or in other words, when all of the evidence is weighed that the matter is more probably true than not.)
Duty: That the defendant owed you a duty to exercise reasonable care. Duty means an obligation to conform to a particular standard of conduct toward another person which is recognized and enforced in the law.
Breach of Duty (Negligence): That the defendant breached its duty of care or, in other words, failed to exercise that degree of care which a reasonable person would exercise under the circumstances. This is known as negligence. The mere happening of an accident is not proof of negligence.
Proximate Cause: That the defendant’s negligence was a substantial cause of your injury or harm. In addition, you must show that the harm was reasonably foreseeable to a person in the defendant’s position at the time of the defendant’s negligence.
Damages: That you suffered injury or harm.