Can You Sue for Negligence?

It’s a common quip that you can sue for any reason in the United States. While that may be a well-tread joke, it doesn’t reflect the reality of civil law. As defined by state or federal law, you must have a good reason to file a lawsuit.

Typically, this means that somebody must have either willfully or negligently taken action that harmed you in some way. Unfortunately, the U.S. legal system is so complicated that it confuses many people, who can’t tell whether they have a legitimate reason to sue.

There are multiple solutions to this problem, but one of the most effective is to contact an attorney and let them explain your legal options.

Schedule a free case evaluation and consultation with a Morgan & Morgan attorney if you believe you've been a victim of negligence. During this initial meeting, our attorneys will do their best to answer that burning question: can you sue for negligence?

Don’t wait. Contact us today to schedule your free case evaluation.

When Can You Sue for Negligence?

Just because someone has been negligent doesn’t necessarily mean you can sue them — there have to be other demonstrable factors at play as well. More specifically, a lawsuit based on negligence needs to prove four factors in court:

• Duty of care
• Breach of duty
• Causation
• Damages

If your attorney can’t prove all of these factors, you’ll likely lose your lawsuit. Most attorneys will decline to take a case unless they believe they can prove one or more of these factors.

Duty of Care

You may not realize it, but most people are bound by law to act with care toward others. The most obvious example is a teacher being duty-bound to ensure the children in their care are safe from harm. That duty is defined both by law and by the contract they signed when they accepted their role as an educator and caregiver.

However, even if someone hasn’t signed a contract to act a certain way toward others, they’re probably duty-bound to do so.

For example, if a friend invites you to visit their home, they’re duty-bound to ensure that their dwelling is safe. If they have rickety stairs in their home that could cause an injury to an unwary visitor and they didn’t either try to remove that danger or warn you ahead of time, they’re failing to act upon their duty to protect others.

Breach of Duty

Having established that another party has a duty of care toward you, your attorney must also establish that they breached this duty.

Typically, this involves demonstrating an act of negligence. In the previous example, your friend probably isn’t actively trying to harm you. But if they kept putting off repairing the stairs and forgot to warn you, that failure to act still counts as a negligent act.

However, the fact that you were injured alone doesn’t prove that the other party was negligent in their duty. If they took reasonable action to fulfill their duty and those actions weren’t enough to protect you from harm, they haven’t breached their duty of care. 

Having a duty of care doesn’t mean that somebody must do anything and everything to protect others; it just means they have to take reasonable action to protect others.

Can you sue for negligence? In short, yes, but an attorney must be able to prove that negligence and evidence of a reasonable attempt to fulfill a duty of care typically negate a claim of negligence.

Causation

The next factor your attorney will need to prove is causation. This means that your attorney needs to show that any harm you suffered resulted from the negligence. Both direct causation and indirect causation can be sufficient for a lawsuit based on negligence, depending on the circumstances.

Most of the evidence your attorney collects for your case will likely be centered on proving causation. For example, if you have physical injuries, your attorney will need to prove that those injuries were attributable to negligent action or lack of action by another party.

Similarly, if you suffered from an illness, your attorney would need to provide evidence that you wouldn’t have acquired the illness (or would have experienced less severe harm from it) were it not for negligence.

Damages

Finally, your attorney needs to prove that the harm you suffered resulted in losses that can be quantified in damages. In a legal context, damages are the financial rewards you claim from another party to cover your losses and resulting expenses or hardship.

Damages will generally be quite easy to determine whether you’ve been physically or emotionally injured. The cost of your medical expenses and any lost wages due to lost work time are considered damages and can be easily calculated.

However, it might be more difficult to calculate damages if your reputation was tarnished or you suffered diminished quality of life. These sorts of outcomes often result in lifelong harm that can only be estimated. An experienced Morgan and Morgan attorney can determine an approximate value that will be used to make your case in court.

On the other hand, if the harm you suffered was minimal, you might not be eligible to sue for negligence. There has to be some monetary value that can be assigned to the harm you suffered. If there is no such value, or the value is less than the court fees, there isn’t a reason to sue.