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In the eyes of California law, personal injury issues fall under the category of torts.  As in other areas such as medical malpractice, personal injury torts presume that a wrong has been done, for which the complainant can be reimbursed and the "tortfeasor" (the person who committed the wrong) can be sued for damages. 

• Personal injury torts fall under three broad categories in California:
• Intentional torts
• Negligent torts
• Torts based strictly on liability

At this point it's important to draw the distinction between torts and crimes.  A tort is pursued in civil court, with a wronged party and a lawsuit against the offender.  A crime is an offense against the state, pursued in criminal court, with the possibility of jail time and fines.  Some personal injury torts will meet both criteria, though -- assault and battery, for instance, is a crime but the victim can also press a civil claim against the offender.  

Battery would fall under the category of an intentional tort, where it can be proven that the offender acted willfully and deliberately to do harm.  Other intentional torts would include assault (the verbal threat of bodily injury), false imprisonment, kidnap, harassment, invasion of privacy or trespass.  Defamation and slander are often considered intentional torts -- the offender made the conscious decision to print or say harmful things about the defendant.  So, under California law, a whole new set of civil recourses are available along with criminal charges in such cases.

• Negligent torts have to meet certain criteria of their own.  The plaintiff has to prove that:
• the defendant had a clear responsibility to protect the defendant from "unreasonable risk"
• the defendant did not see that responsibility through
• the defendant's negligence was the cause of the plaintiff's injury
• the plaintiff did suffer damages

A 1975 decision did establish the idea of "comparative negligence."  Under comparative negligence, a jury can examine who was really at fault in a case and assign the blame and liability accordingly.  If, say, a driver runs a red light and hits a car in the intersection, the jury can assign 90 percent of the blame to the driver running the red light and 10 percent to the driver with the right of way; the red-light runner then pays 90 percent of the damages.  In other cases, the complainant might be 90 percent to blame and the other driver 10 percent; thus the other driver only pays 10 percent of the damages and the complainant has to forget about the rest.

Strict liability pertains to cases where the defendant is liable regardless of the plaintiff's level of fault.  It usually means extremely dangerous or hazardous activities or occupations (demolition, crop dusting, explosives).  In more recent years, strict liability has also been interpreted as defective-product litigation.  Defective product litigation gives society at large a say in setting the bar for what will and won't be acceptable for product safety and design.  It also aims at the manufacturer of the product, usually a large corporation that can more easily absorb the cost of litigation or settlement. 

The standard for burden of proof is different in a tort case; the law stipulates a "preponderance of evidence" rather than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" of criminal cases.  The plaintiff has to show that a majority of the evidence works against the defendant; in cases where criminal and civil charges are being pursued simultaneously, this difference in burden of proof might mean different results in the case.  Often a defendant might be acquitted of criminal charges, but still liable on the civil counts. 

California also provides for "vicarious liability" involving a third party who wasn't directly involved with the defendant's actions.  A common example of vicarious liability might be the bar owner or bartender who served someone who was obviously intoxicated, then that person was involved in a car wreck after leaving the bar. 

"Joint and several" liability assigns responsibility to more than one defendant.  Commonly, the monetary damages are borne jointly between all defendants, but non-monetary (pain and suffering, damage to reputation, emotional distress, and other more-subjective readings) damages are assigned severally (to each individual). This decision was arrived at after the legislature decided that the current joint-and-several structure could be too punitive to parties that actually had little to do with the damages.  The comparative negligence formula then comes into play to adjust the way the damages are paid out.

• The typical procedural outline for a California personal injury suit would include:
• Complaint filing
• Service of complaint
• Response to complaint
• Hearing of challenges to sufficiency of complaint
• Discovery (interrogatories, requests for documents, depositions, etc)
• Discovery motions
• Trial setting
• Settlement negotiations
• Trial

It's important to know that in California, as in many other states, most civil cases are settled before they ever go to trial.

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