Pennsylvania Personal Injury Attorneys

The right to be paid for pain and suffering, in most cases. 75 Pa.C.S. section 1705 makes insurers offer two alternatives and notify every named insured in writing before renewal. The statutory notice says limited tort lets you and household members covered by the policy recover all medical and other out-of-pocket expenses, but not pain and suffering or other nonmonetary damages, unless the injury meets the policy's definition of serious injury or another exception applies. Full tort keeps the unrestricted right to sue. Two defaults matter. A named insured who does not respond to either notice is conclusively presumed to have chosen full tort. An owner of a currently registered private passenger vehicle who has no financial responsibility is deemed to have chosen limited tort.

42 Pa.C.S. section 7102 answers both halves of that. Contributory negligence does not bar recovery where the plaintiff's negligence was not greater than the causal negligence of the defendant or defendants being sued, and damages are reduced in proportion to the plaintiff's share. A plaintiff at exactly 50 percent recovers half. On the defence side the Fair Share Act makes each defendant liable only for its own apportioned proportion, with a separate and several judgment entered against each. Five situations stay joint and several, so one defendant can be made to pay the whole award: intentional misrepresentation, an intentional tort, a defendant held liable for not less than 60 percent of the total, and two statutory categories.

Six months of notice, under 42 Pa.C.S. section 5522. Anyone about to bring a civil action against a government unit for injury to person or property has to file a written statement in that unit's office within six months of the injury or of the accrual of the cause of action, and where the defendant is a Commonwealth agency, in the Attorney General's office as well. The statement has to name and give the residence of the injured person and of the person whose claim it is, the date and hour of the accident, roughly where it happened, and any attending physician. Miss it and the action is dismissed, though the court shall excuse the failure on a showing of reasonable excuse.

Only inside the list. 42 Pa.C.S. section 8541 makes a local agency immune from damages for injury to a person or property as a general rule, and section 8542 then reopens the door for a closed set of acts. The claim has to be one that would be recoverable at common law or under a statute if immunity were unavailable, and the injury has to come from the negligent acts of the agency or an employee acting within the scope of their duties, in one of the listed categories. Vehicle liability is the first of them, covering the operation of a motor vehicle in the agency's possession or control. Conduct amounting to a crime, actual fraud, actual malice or willful misconduct is excluded from negligent acts.

One is, and the deadline is short. 75 Pa.C.S. section 3746 sets out when a driver has to give immediate notice of an accident to the police department. If a police officer then does not investigate an accident that section 3746 required to be investigated, 75 Pa.C.S. section 3747 puts the duty back on the driver, who has five days to forward a written report of the accident to the department. Where the driver is physically incapable of making the report and does not own the vehicle, the owner has to make it within the same five days. A driver who is incapacitated is excused for the period of that incapacity.

A filing that has to happen early or the case is exposed. Pennsylvania Rule of Civil Procedure 1042.3 applies to any action alleging that a licensed professional deviated from an acceptable professional standard. The plaintiff's attorney, or the plaintiff personally if unrepresented, files a certificate of merit with the complaint or within 60 days after it. The certificate states one of a short list of things, the usual one being that an appropriate licensed professional has supplied a written statement that there is a reasonable probability the care, skill or knowledge exercised fell outside acceptable professional standards and caused the harm. The rule covers a lack of informed consent claim too. The professional who writes that statement need not be the trial expert.