New Mexico Personal Injury Law

When it comes to personal injury, every state has its own unique laws. If you’ve been hurt in New Mexico, it’s important you understand how the laws work in this state. You should have an experienced personal injury lawyer on your side who is knowledgeable in New Mexico’s laws and the Albuquerque court system.

Time limits

Many states have statute of limitations on personal injury lawsuits. A statute of limitations is simply a time limit within which you must file your lawsuit. If you don’t file before this time expires, you will not be allowed to bring a case at all.

New Mexico law puts a three-year statute of limitations on personal injury. The time limit begins on the day of the accident or injury or the day you discover an injury directly related to an accident, whichever is later. In the case of a wrongful death personal injury case, the time limit begins the day the person passed away.

Damage caps

Many states also have limits as to how much you can sue for in the case of personal injury. There are typically two types of damages a person can collect: economic and non-economic. There is normally no cap on economic damages. Caps usually apply only to non-economic damages.

Economic damages are losses and expenses that can be directly quantified in monetary terms. These include things like medical bills, loss of income, or damage to personal property. Non-economic damages cannot be quantified directly in terms of money. They include things like pain and suffering or loss of companionship.

In New Mexico, medical malpractice lawsuits have a cap of $600,000 for non-economic damages. No other type of case comes with automatic caps, so the final decision about how much to award will be decided by the court.

Shared fault

New Mexico allows for more than one personal to be held responsible for an accident. This is known as shared fault or comparative liability. If both parties were somewhat at fault, the court will assign a percentage to both sides. This percentage will affect your final damage award number.

As an example, say you are in car accident caused primarily by another driver’s failure to obey a red light signal. That driver will be mainly at fault; however, if you were texting on your phone at the time you may be held partially at fault. The other driver may be 90 percent at fault and you 10 percent.

In that case, your final damage award will go down by 10 percent. If you settle out of court, the insurance company will use this rule in negotiating any settlement. That’s just one reason it’s crucial to have Albuquerque personal injury lawyers working for you who know precisely what they’re doing.

Actions against government

While you have three years to file a suit against any private organization, the statute of limitations is quite different if you need to file a personal injury action against an employee or agency that is part of New Mexico’s government.

In that case, you only have 90 days from the time of injury to file your claim for negligence and personal injury. It’s critical that you get on these types of cases immediately. For more information, look at the New Mexico Tort Claims Act and talk to your lawyer.

Animal bites

Every state is different when it comes to deciding how liable owners are for their personal animals. New Mexico is somewhat unique in that it has no specific code or law about animal bite liability.

This means you can always sue an animal’s owner for liability, but you are only likely to win if you can definitively prove that the owner should have known their animal was dangerous. Again, the smart thing to do is talk to your lawyer to decide if you have a case.