Article source: Brown & Roberto Law Firm
Knoxville is a city in Tennessee that’s right next to the Tennessee River and is surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains. The population here in this city ranges in the hundreds of thousands.
Knoxville started way back in 1786, which is before cars, before phones, and even before Tennessee was officially a state. And when Tennessee did eventually become a state, it was chosen as the first state capital.
We can all agree that Knoxville is a pretty busy place. People go to school there, people work there, and people buy stuff every single day. Toys, tools, cars, kitchen things, medicine, machines. All kinds of products are being used all the time, in homes, at work, and outside. Unfortunately, some of these products eventually cause harm, leaving the victim in need of a Knoxville product liability attorney.
Product liability is simply a case that is filed when a product is bought and used with the expectation of safety, but turns around to cause harm to the user. In this blog, we’ll be going over the factors that affect the settlement amount the victim is eventually going to walk away with.
The Injury and How Bad It Is
One of the biggest things that affects the settlement value is how badly someone was hurt.
If the injury is small and heals quickly, the settlement is usually smaller. If the injury is serious and changes someone’s life, the settlement can be much higher. This includes things like medical bills that already happened and medical care that will still be needed later.
It also includes pain. Not just pain you can see, but pain that sticks around. Some injuries hurt every day. Some injuries make it hard to sleep, move, or even think clearly.
If the injury causes permanent problems, like not being able to use an arm properly or needing help to do normal things, that matters a lot. The more the injury changes daily life, the more it usually affects the value of the case.
Work, Jobs, and Lost Money
When someone gets hurt, they might not be able to work. Maybe they miss days. Maybe they miss months. Sometimes they cannot go back to the same job at all.
That lost money counts. If someone had earned a paycheck but couldn’t because of the injury, that can be added to the settlement.
Future money matters too. If an injury makes it harder to work later on or limits what kind of job a person can have, that loss is also part of the case. It is not just about today. It is about what the injury does to the future.
Shared Liability
Sometimes, when someone gets hurt, it is not only one person’s fault. For example, say maybe the product was bad, but the person also didn’t use it the exact right way. Or maybe there were instructions, and they didn’t read all of them. That doesn’t mean they wanted to get hurt. It just means things didn’t go perfectly.
When that happens, the court examines everyone involved to determine each party’s role. If both sides contributed to the accident, it is considered shared liability. How compensation is handled then depends on the state’s fault system—whether comparative fault or contributory fault applies.
Legal Fees
One of the things that affects your final take-home amount is your lawyer’s fees. Since they’re working on contingency, they are only paid after a settlement is landed, so they’ll surely be getting a cut of the settlement paid.
Key Takeaways
- Settlement depends on injury severity.
- Lost income and future earnings are included.
- Shared liability can reduce your payout.
- Legal fees are deducted from the settlement.
