Tom McCutccheon
Over the next several weeks I am going to write a series of articles that cover several areas of the law in a little more depth and with points of law that I believe will be helpful, sort of a “people’s law school”.
The first area of law I will discuss is the law of torts. Personal injury lawyers practice law in the area of tort. Joel and I are personal injury lawyers.
What McCutcheon & Hamner does is help people who have experienced an injury on a contingency fee basis. We do not get paid nor expect to be paid unless and until our clients receive money. We handle small car accidents, big car accidents, mack-truck wrecks, slip and fall cases as well as on-the-job injury cases. We go shoulder-to-shoulder with our clients through the process the law requires for our clients to be compensated fairly for their injury. I absolutely and sincerely care about each client that I have and can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have a relationship with your client to understand how their injury affects them and to help them understand the strong facts and weaknesses of their case and how those facts affect what they recover.
We practice tort law. Tort law is the idea that if someone acts in a way that they know or should know will cause harm to someone else then they are responsible for the harm they cause. Forseeability is the cornerstone of liability. I tell juries it is sort of like the sign that we see in stores that says “pretty to look at, lovely to hold, if you should break it, consider it sold”.
Tort law in this day and age is divided into two ideas, the first being that if you act in a way that foreseeably creates harm such as driving too fast, following too close or leaving water on a slippery floor you’re responsible for the harm that you cause. The second idea is that of rules being in place that prevent harm and the consequences of breaking such a rule. For example, the rule is for every ten miles of hour for speed you have to leave twenty feet of distance between you and the car in front of you. If someone breaks that rule and rear ends the car in front of them, they are responsible for the harm they cause whether the harm is to property, people or both.
We will talk more about tort law in the next column.
Buckle up and drive safely.
McCutcheon & Hamner, P.C.
2210 Helton Drive
Florence, Alabama 35630
Telephone: 256-764-0112
Facsimile: 256-349-2529
