Liability: A Legal Explanation
For a personal injury claim to succeed you must be able to prove that whoever you are bringing the claim against is legally responsible for your injuries. This means that you cannot claim compensation for a ‘pure accident’ where there is no one else to blame or where you yourself are totally responsible for what happened. In legal terms this legal responsibility is called liability.
In the majority of personal injury cases someone is liable because they either failed to do something that would have prevented the accident or they did something which caused the accident.
Assessing liability for a personal injury or accident claim can often be tricky. It is advisable to seek the opinion of a specialist personal injury solicitor, who will be experienced in assessing legal liability in a range of accident scenarios.
If a personal injury claim is made and the defendant disputes liability (ie argues that they are not at fault) then ultimately it will be for a judge to decide if they are liable. If the judge finds in the claimant’s favour and liability is established then the claimant will be entitled to recover compensation for their injuries. However if there is no finding of liability then the personal injury claim will fail and there will be no obligation on the defendant to pay damages.
Fortunately in the overwhelming majority of accident claims liability is not contested all the way to trial which means that it is generally a case of simply quantifying what the personal injury claim is ‘worth’ in terms of compensation, for both the injuries and financial losses incurred.







