How to Win a Personal Injury Lawsuit Without Proving Negligence

The vast majority of personal injury claims are based on allegations of negligence — i.e., that the responsible party made a mistake in such a way that they can be held legally responsible for damages flowing from that mistake. Such claims require the plaintiff to prove that the defendant was negligent, which can be a tough hurdle to clear. Many personal injury claims fail because the plaintiff was unable to satisfactorily prove negligence. But what many potential plaintiffs don’t know is that there are some personal injury claims that do not require the plaintiff to prove negligence. Our Tifton personal injury lawyers explain how below.

Negligence vs. Strict Liability

Negligence is the most common legal basis in personal injury claims, including motor vehicle accident, slip and fall, and wrongful death claims, just to name a few. To prevail on a claim of negligence, the plaintiff must prove four elements:

Duty: The defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care. In many cases, that is the duty to act as a “reasonably prudent person” would under the same or similar circumstances.
Breach: The defendant’s behavior fell below the duty of care they owed to the plaintiff.
Causation: The defendant’s breach of duty was the actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury.
Damages: The plaintiff suffered actual damages as a result of the defendant’s breach.

Failure to prove any one of those four elements by a preponderance of the evidence can sink a personal injury claim.

Strict liability, on the other hand, allows for the imposition of liability without a showing of negligence. To put it in simple terms, strict liability means “if the defendant did X, the defendant is liable for X.” Generally, strict liability focuses on the inherently dangerous condition of the activity or product in question rather than the defendant’s conduct. As you’ll glean from our discussion of strict liability-based claims below, one of the primary policy rationales behind strict liability is that it helps to allocate risk to those who are in the best position to prevent harm.

Legal Claims Based on Strict Liability

Strict liability applies only in a handful of personal injury claims, which we discuss in detail below. For more information about your potential strict liability claim, please speak to a Tifton personal injury lawyer.

Products Liability

Products liability claims arise when a consumer is injured by a defective product. A product can be defective due to a design defect (i.e., the product is inherently unsafe due to a design flaw), manufacturing defect (i.e., the product is rendered unsafe by a defect during the manufacturing process), or failure to warn (i.e., the product’s instructions do not adequately warn of risks associated with the product).

Georgia’s products liability law is codified at O.C.G.A. § 51-1-11, which courts have interpreted as requiring plaintiffs to prove the following four elements for strict liability to attach:

The plaintiff suffered an injury to his person or property by using the product.
The product was defective (i.e., design defect, manufacturing defect, or failure to warn).
There is a direct link between the product defect and the injury the plaintiff suffered.
The plaintiff was using the product as intended or in a foreseeable manner.

Notice that duty of care and breach thereof are not elements of products liability claims; liability can attach regardless of the defendant’s diligence. Even so, such claims are often extremely complex due to the technical nature of proving a product defect. For more information about proving products liability under a strict liability theory, please speak to a Tifton personal injury lawyer.

Abnormally Dangerous Activities

The negligence standard in personal injury law generally applies to activities that involve a risk of injury but are otherwise routine, such as driving a car, maintaining property, supervising children, and the like. But not all activities that carry a risk of harm fall into that category. That’s why, in Georgia, “abnormally dangerous” or “ultrahazardous” activities are subject to the strict liability standard. Examples of abnormally dangerous activities for strict liability purposes include:

Use or storage of hazardous materials
Blasting or the use of explosives
Heavy construction activities
Nuclear or radioactive materials
Disposal of toxic waste
Keeping wild animals
Controlled burns

The policy rationale for applying strict liability to abnormally dangerous activities is that the risk of injury associated with them is unacceptably high, even if the individuals performing them take every precaution necessary to prevent injuries. Readers should note, however, that “abnormally dangerous activity” is not a rigid category and may encompass more activities than those listed here. To assess whether an activity that caused your injury could be classified as abnormally dangerous, please speak to a Tifton personal injury lawyer.

Dog Bites

The traditional rule for dog bites was that every dog got one bite — i.e., dog owners were not liable for dog bites unless their dog had bitten someone in the past. That is no longer the law in Georgia. Instead, O.C.G.A. § 51-2-7 imposes quasi-strict liability for dog bites: “A person who owns or keeps a vicious or dangerous animal of any kind and who, by careless management or by allowing the animal to go at liberty, causes injury to another person who does not provoke the injury by his own act…” To prove that a dog was vicious, the plaintiff needs only to show that the dog was required to be at heel or on a leash by local regulation and that the dog was not at heel or leashed at the time of the attack. (Tifton animal control law requires dogs to be leashed and prohibits them from running free or unattended.)

Discuss Your Claim With a Tifton Personal Injury Lawyer

Regardless of whether your personal injury claim is based on negligence or strict liability, you will need competent legal counsel to ensure the best chances of success. To get started, please contact a Tifton personal injury lawyer at the Hudson Injury Firm by calling 229-396-5848 or using our online form.