If you’ve ever tried to read a legal brief or a majority opinion, you may find the text hard to comprehend. Legal documents are written in a specific manner to convey key points or to protect against challenges or counter arguments, but all of this legal jargon can be a bit confusing to those who aren’t hearing these terms on a regular basis. Workers’ compensation and personal injury law is complex enough without having to bust out your dictionary to understand what’s being said.
In an effort to help explain some of the common phrases you may come across during the process of your injury claim, we’ve put together a short glossary to help explain what these terms mean.
Injury Law Terms Explained
Here’s a brief explanation of some of the terms you may come across during the process of filing a workers’ compensation or personal injury claim.
Affidavit – An affidavit is a formal written statement that is made under oath.
Contingency Fee – Injury lawyers regularly work on a contingent basis, meaning they get a set percentage of your successful claim. Instead of paying them a flat fee of $10,000, you will only owe them a percentage of whatever you end up winning, oftentimes between 20 and 40 percent.
Claimant – The claimant is the person filing the injury or workers’ compensation case. If you are hoping to collect injury benefits, you are the claimant. A claimant is also sometimes synonymously used with the word plaintiff.
Damages – Damages are what you are trying to collect in an injury case. You can have economic damages with specific compensation amounts, like lost wages or medical bills, or you can collect non-economic damages for things like pain and suffering or mental anguish. An experienced lawyer can help you determine a fair amount of money to seek for these non-economic damages.
Defendant – This is the person who you are hoping to collect compensation from. They are attempting to defend themselves from your injury claim.
Duty of Care – Duty of care is what business or property owners owe to those who enter their residence or place of business. You have a duty to keep your visitors or customers safe and injury free, and if you fail to uphold this duty, either accidentally or through negligence, you can be held accountable.
Liability – Liability is another way to say that someone is at fault for your injuries. If you slipped on a wet spot at a convenience store and fractured your ankle, the convenience store could be held liable for your injuries.
Mediation – Mediation is a process that allows both sides to sit down with an independent third party in hopes of coming to an acceptable agreement before the case heads before a judge.
Motion – A motion is a request by one party for a judge’s ruling on an issue that the two sides cannot agree to.
Negligence – If you are attempting to prove that the other party was negligent or acted negligently at the time of your injury, you are trying to showcase that they did not act with proper care. If safety railings weren’t regularly checked or replaced, or a driver got behind the wheel while drunk and caused your accident, they will likely be found to have acted negligently, which can increase your compensation award.
Settlement – A settlement is what occurs when the two sides reach an agreement to put an end to a claim for compensation. Oftentimes a settlement signals the end of an injury case.
Statute Of Limitations – The statute of limitations refers to how long you have to file your claim before you are no longer eligible to collect compensation. You can’t file a wrongful death lawsuit 20 years after the fact. You need to file your claim within the given statute of limitations for the type of compensation you are seeking. You should have plenty of time, but because evidence can disappear and witness memory can fade, you should not delay in filing for compensation.
Testimony – Testimony is evidence or a statement made by a witness during a deposition or trial.
If you run into a term you don’t understand, or you just want some experienced legal minds to put all this jargon to good use for your claim, reach out to Dean and the team at Margolis Law Firm today at (952) 230-2700.
