After someone has filed a personal injury claim, the insurance company seeks to determine who should be named as the party-at-fault. Information that the insurance company obtains during its investigations, as well as during the negotiations helps to identify who should be held responsible for the accident-caused damages.

Factors considered by insurer

What does the damage indicate about the actions taken by each driver? Did either of them act in a careless manner? Was one of them less careful than the other one?

Did either driver break any traffic rules? Was either of them distracted, while in control of the steering wheel?

What arguments has either party made, so far? Which of those seemed most reasonable? The party with the most reasonable argument seldom gets pointed to as the person responsible for the accident-caused damages.

Possible arguments from defendant

The defendant might allege that the claimant was partly responsible for the accident. If the insurance company agrees, then it must study the percent of damage that was caused by the claimant’s actions. Once that has been determined, the insurer deducts that percent from the amount of money that would have been the claimant’s compensation. That is what happens in a jurisdiction that uses the comparative negligence principle.

The claimant had a medical condition, and that increased the extent to which the injury proved harmful. The attorney for the claimant should seek proof that the claimant’s condition was under control during the minutes that lead up to the accident. That would indicate that the same condition should have had no effect on the extent of the damage, as caused by the accident.

Moreover, the Personal Injury Lawyer in Halifax know that the defendant cannot use the claimant’s medical condition as an excuse. Each person has the right to seek a safe means for getting from one destination to an alternate location. Thus, someone with a medical condition has the right to complain about anything that puts him or her in an added amount of danger.

The strongest case against the defendant

None of the defendant’s arguments can work to weaken greatly any evidence that the defendant was negligent. Still, a claimant does not have the right to allege that the opposing party was negligent. Instead, all claimants need to demonstrate proof of the other party’s negligence.

How does the claimant show that the defendant behaved in a careless and neglectful manner? The claimant’s lawyer needs to gather evidence of the defendant’s failure to act in a safe and reasonable manner. That might be shown by the nature of the accident-caused damage, or perhaps by the images that were found on any video footage, if there was any pre-accident footage.