Disability Legal Cases and How the Law Handles Them

 
You should know about disability legal cases and how the law handles them. We'll discuss that now.

What Does the Term Disability Legal Case Mean?

If you hear the phrase “disability legal case,” that won’t mean the same thing every time. Disability law, in a broad sense, means laws dealing with individuals with disabilities. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re talking about a personal injury lawsuit that occurred because someone disabled alleges that a specific person or entity harmed them.

 
If you hear this term, it could mean that someone with a disability has brought a lawsuit against a person or entity that discriminated against them based on their condition. For instance, most buildings now must operate under a federal mandate. It states that they must allow disabled individuals access and provide them reasonable accommodations while they’re inside.

Examples of Disability Legal Cases

You might have a situation where someone in a wheelchair sues a building or the company running it because they don’t provide wheelchair access. Most modern buildings need to have ramps to let individuals in wheelchairs inside. If a building only has front steps, and no ramp, a person in a wheelchair could sue them.

If, once the person in the wheelchair gains access to the building, they can’t get upstairs because there’s no elevator, they might sue whoever owns or runs the building for that reason. You can probably think of similar situations when a disabled individual would sue. If they can’t move freely in a building, that’s ample reason for a lawsuit.

Disability Legal Cases in the Business World

You might also sometimes see a person with a disability sue a company if they believe that the business entity discriminated against them from a hiring standpoint. Maybe you have someone in a wheelchair or a person who has some issues with their mobility. They apply for a job for which they have abundant credentials. They’re turned down, however.

 
If the individual with the disability suspects they didn’t get the job because of their physical condition, they can sue the company that neglected to hire them. However, they must have evidence that the company turned them down for that reason.

Getting that evidence might prove difficult. The individual who the company didn’t hire would presumably need some kind of documentation, an eyewitness to give testimony, or something similar to convince a jury of what they’re asserting.

Disability Legal Cases in Personal Injury Law

Many times, someone with a disability who believes they should collect money from a person or entity who harmed them will sue, and that’s when disability law and personal injury law intersect. When that happens, the injured party must prove their case if they hope to collect a settlement or a judgment from a jury in their favor.

 
Much like discriminatory hiring, the plaintiff must provide evidence that proves their case to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Much like in other personal injury lawsuits, the person with the disability might produce medical records that indicate the person or entity they’re suing harmed them. They may use pictures, videos, eyewitness testimony, or anything else to help them in a courtroom.

How the Law Views These Cases

These days, you will usually find the law sympathetic toward individuals with disabilities who bring lawsuits against buildings, companies, or individuals, assuming it’s not a frivolous lawsuit. The legal system recognized that discrimination still occurs against disabled people relatively often, and the courts need to have robust safeguards in place to prevent such occurrences.

It’s the same with personal injury lawsuits that stem from situations where an individual or entity harmed a person and caused their disability. The court still requires proof that the defendant harmed the plaintiff in the way they claim. You should know, though, that the burden of proof to convince a jury of a defendant’s guilt in a civil action doesn’t rise to the level you’ll see in most criminal cases.

In other words, someone with a disability probably doesn’t need as much evidence to convince a jury that a person or company harmed them as a prosecutor does to convince a jury that a defendant committed a crime. If there’s at least some existing evidence, and then the plaintiff also takes the stand and tells the jury what happened to lead to their condition, that might be enough to secure a judgment in the plaintiff’s favor.

 
Frankly, someone who comes to the stand in a wheelchair or who shows up in court wearing a neck brace can usually elicit a sympathetic reaction from the jury. That assumes, of course, that they also have evidence of what happened to them and they seem credible if they take the stand.

That’s why, in many instances, you will see the defendant in a disability legal case offer a settlement instead of waiting for a jury’s decision. They’ll probably only leave the verdict up to a jury if they truly believe the injured party doesn’t have a strong case.

 
In any event, it’s nice to know that there’s a strong legal framework in place to protect individuals with disabilities if they feel a particular person or entity caused their condition.