Basics to Know About Utah Personal Injury Law

If you have been injured in a car accident, or someone else’s negligence caused you a serious injury, you need to talk to a lawyer and see if you are eligible to receive compensation. For those who live in Utah, talking with Salt Lake City personal injury attorney is the only way to go about dealing with your case. These lawyers have such a huge level of experience when it comes to personal injury cases, and their experience means you will get a favorable outcome during your settlement or trial.

But what else do you need to know about personal injuries and the law in Utah? For one, you must know that there is a statute of limitations that applies to these cases. If you have spent more than four years after the personal injury occurred without filing a case, you cannot file against the other party. This statute of limitations is there to protect other parties against malicious prosecution, where one party files a case because they want to hurt the other party, not because they are suffering financially after the personal injury incident.

Utah is an interesting state for personal injury cases, because they have a shared fault law that applies to a lot of these situations. In these cases, you may find that the court rules you were 50 percent at fault for the accident or incident that caused your personal injury. For example, the court may rule that you were not behaving 100 percent correctly while driving when your accident occurred. Having a 50 percent fault in the case does not mean the other party is exempt. It simply means they only have to pay you 50 percent of the compensation they would pay if they were found completely at fault.

On the surface, the 50 percent ruling is not viewed as favorable to those who seek compensation. But you can look at it on the flipside. In states where the 50 percent ruling is not present, you may have a higher burden of proof to get any compensation. But in Utah, you can get a decent level of compensation even if you were 50 percent at fault for the incident. It also means the other party is not ruined financially because of a compensation filing against them. it is a law that promotes fairness in these cases.

Utah has caps on some of the types of personal injury claims you can make. For example, you can only sue for up to $450,000 in medical malpractice cases. It is important to talk to your lawyer about the possibility of compensation caps in your specific case.

Another Utah specific law involves dog bites. If you were injured by a dog bite, but it was the first time the other party’s dog bit someone, the other party will not have to get rid of their dog or put it down. But they are still required to pay you compensation for any damage or suffering caused by the incident.