If you have been in a construction accident and are trying to bring a claim against another party, a construction accident lawyer in Houston can help you hold the responsible parties accountable and prove negligence. Proving negligence requires that you gather all the right evidence, understand the relevant legal principles and how the evidence bears on them, and then put it all together to present a strong case.
What’s Negligence When It Comes to Construction Accidents?
In general, the idea of negligence just means that someone failed to act with the kind of care they should have, and this failure led to an injury. In a construction accident, this kind of negligence usually manifests as someone ignoring safety protocols, defective products, or someone failing to address a known hazard.
What You Need to Show
You have to prove four things to prove negligence. First is that the other party owed you a duty of care. Next, that they failed in that duty of care. Once you’ve shown that, you have to show that it was specifically that failure in the duty of care that led to your injury, and then, finally, you have to show that your injury had specific damages.
What Your Construction Accident Lawyer in Houston Will Do
Gather Evidence
To prove your case, you’re going to need evidence. Your lawyer knows exactly what evidence is needed and can help you access it, whether that is evidence from the scene like photographs and videos, unsafe equipment that has been preserved, witness statements, repair records, or safety inspection records. Your lawyer will also use your medical records to prove the extent of your injuries and can dig in to find out if the responsible party has any history of negligent behavior. Visit this page to learn more.
Showing Who Is Responsible
On any construction site, there will be many different parties. It’s absolutely crucial that you correctly identify who is responsible for your injuries. It could be a site manager, the property owners, contractors, subcontractors, equipment manufacturers, and more. Each one of these parties has specific duties of care that are described in Texas law. Your lawyer will help you work out whose failure to uphold their duty of care led to your accident.
Proving Causation
It may seem straightforward, but in reality it can be complicated to prove causation: that it was specifically someone’s failure in duty of care that caused the accident in which you were injured. You have to be able to prove that the injuries you suffered would not have happened at all if not for the other party’s negligence. You’ll often need evidence from the scene, witness testimony, and sometimes even explanations from experts to prove this causal relationship. Your lawyer will be able to access all of this and put it together in the narrative that clearly shows what happened.
Construction accident cases can get complicated and there are a lot of moving pieces. If you’ve been injured on site, contact an experienced lawyer as soon as possible.