When a child is injured in the city of Rochester, it is not always clear cut who is responsible and to what degree.
Sometimes, for example, a child will be injured because one person did something dangerous that led to the injury, but another person had been given responsibility for supervising the child and failed to do so.
As experienced personal injury lawyers, we believe that any case involving injury to a child should be carefully scrutinized to determine whether one or more parties were negligent in causing the injury.
When more than one party was negligent and it led to a child’s injury, there is usually no bar to bringing a claim for personal injury against all of the parties responsible.
To successfully pursue a personal injury lawsuit, it is not necessary to establish that any one party was wholly responsible for the child’s injury.
Instead, a jury may assign a percentage of responsibility to any party whose negligence ultimately gave rise to the circumstances that led to the child’s injury.
Even if the injuries to the child are, in part, attributable to the child’s own negligence, a jury can assign a percentage of negligence to the child along with the defendants.
The overall amount in damages that the child recovers would then be reduced by his or her percentage of liability.
While multiple parties may be held responsible for a child’s personal injury, exactly what each party may be required to pay in damages depends on the nature of the case.
For some types of cases, each party may only be responsible for paying the percentage of damages for which they were found liable.
In other types of cases – most notably car accidents where more than one driver caused the accident – any defendant found to be responsible to any degree may be required to pay up to the full amount of damages if the other defendants do not have the assets to pay their full share.
If your child was injured due to another person’s negligence, we can help you. Call us at 585-484-7432.