If you’re ever in a car accident, you need to try to pick up the pieces in the aftermath. That often involves figuring out where you can go to fix your car. You may need medical attention. Perhaps you’ll need to miss some time from work if you have physical injuries from which you must recover.
You may also need to figure out who or what you believe caused the crash. That can become vital very quickly if you’re thinking about filing a lawsuit to recover economic damages, non-economic ones, or both.
Perhaps you think you can blame a passenger who was in your car when it crashed. Passenger negligence can play a part in car crashes, and if you can establish that it occurred, you might get the money you need to cover those economic and non-economic losses from your passenger by suing them.
Before you do, though, you will need to consider several factors. Let’s discuss when you can blame a passenger for your car accident in the following article.
First, we’ll start by saying that you can blame a passenger for your car crash at any time. In that respect, it’s just like suing someone. You can do it any time, but do you have a solid legal basis for doing so?
You can always file a lawsuit against a person or entity, and that certainly includes situations where you feel a passenger in your vehicle caused your car wreck. However, if you show up in court with your lawyer and flimsy or no evidence that backs up your assertion, then the trial won’t get far, and you will probably anger the judge as well.
While you can technically sue anyone at any time, if you bring a baseless lawsuit to a court’s attention, that’s probably a waste of both their time and yours.
Getting back to blaming a passenger following a car accident, if you bring such a case to a lawyer to ask their opinion, they might bring up a concept called “passenger negligence.” We mentioned it a moment ago.
Negligence matters quite a bit in not just car accident cases, but in several other kinds of lawsuits. For instance, if you can prove negligence in a situation where you believe a doctor harmed you, then you’re well on your way toward proving medical malpractice, and you will probably collect some money in damages.
It’s the same with a passenger in your car who believe caused your accident. If you can point to evidence that suggest their negligence, then you can probably win your lawsuit.
Negligence in this case means that a standard of conduct existed that the passenger should have followed, but they did not do so. Maybe they did something like grab your hands suddenly while you were driving or put their hands over your eyes, blinding you.
By doing so, they clearly violated a standard of safe conduct that existed for passengers in a vehicle. They demonstrated negligence by creating a dangerous situation. If you allege that something like this happened, and you can prove it, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t at least consider filing a lawsuit against the guilty individual.
However, you might need to produce some physical evidence if you hope to collect any money through a settlement offer or through a jury’s verdict in your favor. Even if you feel strongly that your passenger caused the crash, what can you show the jury that convinces them?
Maybe you can show them still photos taken from a traffic camera, if any exist. They might show the passenger blinding you by putting their hands over your eyes.
If you don’t have anything like that, then you might put some eyewitnesses on the stand who can speak on your behalf. Maybe you had another passenger in the car, and they can tell the jury what happened.
The more evidence you can produce that backs up what you say happened, the more likely you’ll win your lawsuit. However, you might also run into a situation where you know what happened, but you have no physical evidence and no eyewitnesses other than yourself and your passenger. Maybe, when you accuse them, they lie on the stand and say that’s not what happened at all.
In that scenario, it’s not impossible for you to still win your case. It becomes much more difficult, though.
If it’s your word against the passenger’s, and they lie under oath, it becomes a matter of who’s more convincing. The jury might believe you, but they may believe the passenger instead. If so, it’s anybody’s guess whether you can get any money in damages out of the deal.
There’s one more factor you should think about when you’re trying to determine if you should sue your passenger because you believed their actions caused your car crash. You should think about the outcome of this trial beyond the money that could potentially change hands.
Maybe it was your best friend or even a family member who did something that you believe caused your crash. Perhaps they did jerk the wheel out of your hands for a moment or put their hands over your eyes as a joke.
It was a foolish thing to do, but it wasn’t out of any malicious intent. It was just a poor, spur-of-the-moment decision that proved disastrous.
If that’s true, and you decide to sue them, then presumably, things between you will never be the same again, regardless of whether you win your lawsuit or not. If you’re accusing someone who you don’t even like, that’s one thing. If you’re filing a lawsuit against a friend or loved one, consider the potential repercussions after the trial.
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