Understanding Texas Law Before You Meet With Houston Personal Injury Lawyers

This law is based on torts which are harmful and deliberate acts that the law has to compensate for. These are different from crimes which are wrongs committed against society at large. Torts therefore have lesser punishments usually in the form of fine and compensation that needs to be paid to the victim. It is also useful to know that in a tort you have two sides involved, the victim of the tort and the tortfeasor (the person who has committed the tort). There are usually three kinds of torts - intentional, negligent and torts based on strict liability.

Houston personal injury lawyers will inform you that intentional torts involve deliberate and pre-meditated harm that has been caused to the victim by the actions of another. Negligent torts have to do with how careful the tortfeasor was when he or she was committing the action that caused harm to the victim. Two terms that legal representatives use in close conjunction with negligence are proximate cause and comparative responsibility. Proximate cause refers to the degree to which the liability for the damage or injury caused can be assigned to the tortfeasor. In some situations the tortfeasor could not foresee the consequences and the actions performed by him are remotely linked to the injury. He should therefore not be held responsible for the entire damage caused.

Comparative responsibility comes into play when the plaintiff is partly responsible for the injury. The jury can divide the liability between the plaintiff and the defendant. The former is allowed compensation only if his percentage of responsibility is less than or equal to 50%. Houston personal injury lawyers will have you know that the jury will reduce the compensation that the defendant has to pay to the same degree that the plaintiff is held responsible. This allows for justice to prevail and both sides to be satisfied to some extent with the verdict.

A Houston Medical Malpractice Lawyer or one of the other Houston personal injury lawyers will also inform you that there is a statue of limitations that describes the time period within which the case can be filed. For the state of Texas, this is two years after the injury has been caused or detected. If you do not file the case within this time period, you lose your chance to do so completely.With this background about the Texas law, you can be sure that visiting one of the Houston personal injury lawyers will now be that much more productive as you can get answers to all your queries.