A person is walking down a store aisle when, all of a sudden, they slip on water and break their wrist.

A person is driving down the road when another motorist rear-ends their car, resulting in severe whiplash.

A person is visiting an acquaintance when the host's dog takes a bite out of them, causing permanent scars.

What do these three scenarios have in common?

• A person is injured
• The injury is not the injured person's fault
• The injury is a result of someone else's negligence

These scenarios are all terrible accidents that happened to someone. The person was minding their own business and ended up hurt by the action (or inaction) of someone else. These wounds will all need a trip to the doctor; the affected may have to take time off of work to recover—and, to reiterate, it wasn't their fault. So are these scenarios fair to the affected? Should the injured have to pay for their wounds?

These are questions that personal injury claims help answer.

Personal Injury Claims

Personal injury claims are legal processes that help a person recover after being harmed by another person's negligence. The idea behind personal injury claims is that the government cannot stop accidents from happening, but they can help a person mitigate the harms they faced in an accident by way of restitutory procedures. When a person files a personal injury claim, they are saying that the injury they received was due to the actions of another entity and that the entity should be held responsible for the emotional, physical, and financial burden that the injury has placed on the injured.

Of course, filing a personal injury claim is only the first step in the process, as a "claim" is just a statement of belief. The claim must be reviewed by a court of law to decide if the claim is true or false. This is why people hire personal injury attorneys. While citizens of the United States can represent their claim, the average citizen does not understand all the implications of the law of the United States.

For this reason, a claimant should hire a personal injury attorney who understands how to file a claim, what is likely to be recovered based on the circumstances of the claim, and knows how to protect the claim in court. Ultimately, it is not up to the claimant, the defendant, or either of their representatives to decide if the claim is true—it is up to the judge presiding over the court or the jury. Therefore, hiring a lawyer who "speaks the judge's language" can help a person's injury claim be consistent with the law and persuasive to the audience who will decide the outcome of a claim.

All this to say, personal injury claims help people recover from an injury by holding the responsible party accountable in a court of law. This court has the final say on where liability lies, but personal injury claims help people protect and secure their rights as an American citizen.