Personal injury award three times greater than requested

According to news reports, 32 year old Ronald Payne was a self employed contractor who was working at the Home Depot store in Christiana, Delaware when a load of 18 wooden doors crashed on top of him. After the accident, Payne required two back surgeries, but neither corrected his injuries and he continues to be unable to work. He sued the Home Depot for the accident and a Wilmington, Delaware jury awarded him $2.9 million in damages – nearly three times the amount that he had requested.

Do you have a personal injury lawsuit?

Personal injury lawsuits vary on the facts and circumstances of each case and can include injuries sustained from accidents at work or home, auto accidents, defective or dangerous products and many, many more. Determining whether you have a personal injury case is easier when you contact an experienced personal injury lawyer in your state. Most personal injury attorneys offer a free consultation to discuss your situation and evaluate your options. In addition, many will work on a contingency fee basis which means that you don’t have out of pocket expenses up front and they don’t get paid unless they recover damages on your behalf. In most cases, a personal injury lawsuit means that someone else’s negligent behavior was partially or totally responsible for your injuries.

Negligence

There are generally four elements to a negligence case. Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

• Duty. The person who was responsible for your injuries had a specific duty. In the case above, Home Depot had a duty to make sure that its workplace was safe.
• Breach. The person who was responsible for your injuries breached that duty. In the case above, Home Depot breached that duty by not keeping its workplace safe as the doors that fell on Payne were not stacked properly.
• Causation. The person’s actions caused your injuries. In the case above, the doors that fell on Payne caused his injuries.
• Damages. You sustained damages related to the incident. In the case above, Payne sustained medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, etc.

While the above is a very generic theory of how a negligence case works, actual negligence lawsuits are far more involved. Only an experienced personal injury attorney will be able analyze the facts and circumstances of your situation to determine whether you might have a case.