Negligence is a core concept in American injury law. What may surprise folks without a background in law, though, is just how many different things can be thought of legally as injuries. Take a look at the less obvious injuries a negligence attorney might be asked to address on behalf of a client.
Professional Conduct
The injurious nature of poor professional conduct is easy to understand in certain cases, such as you might see when doctors are sued for malpractice. That's because medical injuries are injurious in a way that's easy for people to understand. A professional's conduct led to an outright injury of a person's body.
More Than Just Personal Injuries
Negligent professional conduct in other trades may also be considered injurious. This applies even in situations that you might not have been physically harmed. In fact, this is why personal injury law is distinguished from other kinds of injury cases with the adjective "personal." In that branch of law, the injuries are directly related to you, your body and your mental and emotional well-being.
Generally, a professional has to work in a field where the value of their skill is readily recognized. Engineers, architects, financial advisors, wealth managers, and brokers, for example, all have some exposure to negligence claims. Trustees appointed by individuals, organizations, or courts may also be subject to allegations of negligence.
What Negligence Looks Like
Take the example of an architect as a potentially negligent party. An architect might never take a single action that physically harms you, but their actions can lead to other forms of harm, such as financial losses and the difficulty of fixing their errors.
Failing to do something that a competent professional in their field would expect to be done is a standard form of negligence in architecture. An architect might fail, for example, to identify a structural problem such as insufficient support for a tall building in high winds. Significant engineering work would go into rectifying the problem once it is known, and that would cause the architect's client to incur economic losses.
Documentation
Proving negligence in these kinds of cases often demands extensive documentation. This may include securing memos, texts, emails, and blueprints from the architectural firm. An internal email expressing doubts about the feasibility of the project, for example, might be the critical item needed to show that negligence occurred.
Contact a negligence attorney to learn more.
