If you have recently suffered an injury, whether at work, at home, or elsewhere, you may be wondering if there is anything that you can or should do about the situation. One of the things you may be pondering is whether or not it would be appropriate or even possible to file a personal injury lawsuit regarding your recent injury. By learning the basic important facts about personal injury lawsuits, you can determine whether or not to contact a personal injury attorney to help you get the process started.

Personal Injury Lawsuits Can Be Filed for Several Reasons

The first factor that you need to consider when thinking about filing a personal injury lawsuit is that there are certain reasons for which you can file such a suit. One of the main reasons to file a suit against a person or company intentionally did something to harm a person. Such a case might involve an assault or setting someone up to fall or otherwise get hurt.

A more common type of personal injury lawsuit involves negligence. If a person or company did something careless that led to your accident and injury, this can be due cause to file a lawsuit against them. For example, if a store you are shopping in mopped the floor and forgot to put up a wet floor sign, this is a type of negligence that can lead to an injury. Though there was no intent to cause anyone harm, the store is still responsible for what happened to the injured party.

Other forms of personal injury lawsuits include issues with a defective product. Again, the injury was not necessarily caused on purpose but was another party's fault. Medical malpractice cases would also fall under the purview of personal injury law.

Personal Injury Lawsuits Require You to Take Certain Actions

In order to successfully file a personal injury lawsuit, a person must have taken certain steps when the injury occurred as well as after the fact. The first step that you will need to take if you have been injured is to immediately report the injury. This includes alerting the establishment in which you experienced the injury or alerting the authorities that you were injured at home because of a faulty product or the like.

When you alert a business or your workplace that you have been injured, they need to file a report to document that the event took place. Emergency medical services should also be contacted to assess and treat the person's injuries. If you do not report the incident right away to some type of authority that puts it on record or you do not seek out treatment right away, then you will have very little evidence to prove that any injuries you sustained were caused by that specific incident.

As such, you will want to not only take these reporting steps, but also get copies of all records. This can include the accident report from the location, medical records and reports from emergency medical services and police, and even contact information for any witnesses to the accident. All of these documents will be needed in your personal injury filing.

If you were injured in one of the aforementioned scenarios and you have taken the necessary steps to present a good case in a personal injury lawsuit, now is the time to contact a personal injury lawyer to get your case filing started as soon as possible.