Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyer

Atlanta injury lawyers Mark Link and Houston Smith share the top 21 legal terms used by attorneys to win personal injury cases.

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1. Bill of particulars is a detailed, formal, written statement of charges or claims by a plaintiff or the prosecutor given upon the defendant’s formal request to the court for more detailed information. A bill of particulars may be used in either criminal defense or in civil litigation.
2. Bright-line rule (or bright-line test) is a clearly defined rule or standard, generally used in law, composed of objective factors, which leaves little or no room for varying interpretation. The purpose of a bright-line rule is to produce predictable and consistent results in its application. This is in contrast to its opposite, the fine line. Atlanta injury lawyers deal with the is law.
3. Burden of proof (Latin: onus probandi) is the obligation to shift the accepted conclusion away from an oppositional opinion to one’s own position.
4. Color of law refers to an appearance of legal power to act but which may operate in violation of law. For example, though a police officer acts with the “color of law” authority to arrest someone, if such an arrest is made without probable cause the arrest may actually be in violation of law. In other words, just because something is done with the “color of law”, that does not mean that the action was lawful. When police act outside their lawful authority and violate the civil rights of a citizen, the FBI is tasked with investigating. Atlanta injury lawyers help determine how best to apply this law.
5. Direct estoppel prevents a party to a litigation from relitigating an issue that was decided against that party in that litigation, under certain circumstances. Specifically, direct estoppel applies where the issue was decided as part of a larger claim which was finally decided, and stops the issue from being redecided in another claim of the same lawsuit. Contrast collateral estoppel, which stops a claim from being redecided in another lawsuit.
6. Due diligence at its core is simply common sense. From earliest times, anyone considering a decision used due diligence to arrive at the best answer. Over time, due diligence became more popularly used for essentially any type of transaction, where you would perform due diligence before the transaction to make sure you knew as much about the transaction as possible, before you would actually consummate the transaction. It is up to your Atlanta injury lawyers to do their due diligence.
7. Emancipated minor is a minor who is allowed to conduct a business or any other occupation on their own behalf or for their own account outside the influence of a parent or guardian. The minor will then have full contractual capacity to conclude contract with regard to the business. Whether parental consent is needed to achieve the “emancipated” status varies from case to case. In some cases, court permission is necessary. Protocols vary by jurisdiction.
8. Frivolous litigation is the practice of starting or carrying on law suits that have little to no chance of winning. While colloquially, a lawsuit may be termed frivolous if they personally find a claim to be absurd, regardless of its legal standing, in legal usage (with which this article is concerned), as by the judiciary of the United States, “frivolous litigation” is considered to consist of a legal claim or defense presented even though the party or the party’s legal counsel had reason to know that the claim or defense was manifestly insufficient or futile, that is to say, had no legal merit and may also lack legal standing. Atlanta injury lawyers always avoid litigation that isn’t absolutely necessary.
9. Implied consent is a form of consent which is not expressly granted by a person, but rather inferred from a person’s actions and the facts and circumstances of a particular situation (or in some cases, by a person’s silence or inaction). The term is most commonly encountered in the context of United States drunk driving laws.
10. Invited error refers to a trial court’s error against which a party cannot complain to an appellate court because the party encouraged or prompted the error by its own conduct during the trial. The original goal of the invited error doctrine was to prohibit a party from setting up an error at trial and then complaining of it on appeal.
11. Judicial restraint is a theory of judicial interpretation that encourages judges to limit the exercise of their own power. It asserts that judges should hesitate to strike down laws unless they are obviously unconstitutional.[1] It is sometimes regarded as the opposite of judicial activism.
12. Just Compensation is required to be paid by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (and counterpart state constitutions) when private property is taken (or in some states, damaged) for public use. For reasons of expedience, courts have been generally using fair market value as the measure of just compensation, reasoning that this is the amount that a willing seller would accept in a voluntary sales transaction and therefore it should also be payable in an involuntary one. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged that “fair market value” as defined by it falls short of what sellers would demand and receive in voluntary transactions. Your Atlanta injury lawyers will help you determine the fair value of your case based on the facts of your case.
13. Next of kin is a term with many interpretations depending on the jurisdiction being referred to. In some jurisdictions, such as the United States, it is used to describe a person’s closest living blood relative or relatives. In others, next of kin may have no legal definition and may not necessarily refer to blood relatives at all, as in the United Kingdom. Atlanta injury lawyers interact with the next of kin if a loved one is injured or killed in car accident.
14. By operation of law is a legal term that indicates that a right or liability has been created for a party, irrespective of the intent of that party, because it is dictated by existing legal principles. For example, if a person dies without a will, his heirs are determined by operation of law. Similarly, if a person marries or has a child after his or her will has been executed, the law writes this pretermitted spouse or pretermitted heir into the will if no provision for this situation was specifically included.
15. Reasonable person (historically reasonable man) is a legal fiction of the common law representing an objective standard against which any individual’s conduct can be measured. It is used to determine if a breach of the standard of care has occurred, provided a duty of care can be proven. Atlanta injury lawyers must determine if a reasonable person would agree with the facts presented in the case.
16. Beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard of proof required in most criminal cases within an adversarial system. Generally the prosecution bears the burden of proof and is required to prove their version of events to this standard. This means that the proposition being presented by the prosecution must be proven to the extent that there is no “reasonable doubt” in the mind of a reasonable person that the defendant is guilty. There can still be a doubt, but only to the extent that it would not affect a “reasonable person’s” belief regarding whether or not the defendant is guilty.
17. Reasonable time is that amount of time which is fairly necessary, conveniently, to do whatever is required to be done, as soon as circumstances permit. This phrase is a U.S. legal term that has been a topic of controversy for many years. It is generally used in reference to performing an action or remitting payment, but this is a very vague term that causes litigation problems in many court cases.
18. Spoliation of evidence is the intentional or negligent withholding, hiding, alteration or destruction of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding. Spoliation has two consequences: first the act is criminal by statute and may result in fines and incarceration for the parties who engaged in the spoliation, secondly case law has established that proceedings which might have been altered by the spoliation may be interpreted under a spoliation inference. The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a finder of fact can draw from a party’s destruction of a document or thing that is relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or criminal proceeding: The finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as strong a light as possible against the spoliator and in favor of the opposing party.
19. Strike for cause (or removal for cause) is a method of eliminating potential members from a jury panel in the United States. Attorneys on either side of a case have infinite potential to strike potential jurors for causal reasons; thus, the strike for cause is an appealing method for honing down a panel suited to an attorney’s individual interests.
20. Taint is a term used in the legal field with reference to evidence that has been “tainted” or ruined in some manner. The most common of such usage is with reference to evidence, testimony, identification by witnesses, or confessions that have been obtained by law enforcement illegally. The illegality usually results from a violation of one’s constitutional rights, such as a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protecting against unreasonable search and seizure.
21. Ultimate fact is, in law, the conclusion (or conclusions) of factual evidence made by a jury after deliberation. One common definition is “in a trial, a conclusion of fact which is logically deduced from evidence….”. It is “the conclusion arrived during a trial based on the evidentiary facts.” An example would be the conclusion that somebody was liable for negligence because he sped, drove over a double line, skidded and lost control of his car.

The terms and definitions above are here to help you better understand the verbiage your Atlanta injury lawyers use on a daily basis to discuss and represent your legal matters. If you should have any questions regarding these definitions, or feel you need legal advice, pleas contact our office so we may discuss your particular situation.