As a motor vehicle driver on the Grand Canyon State’s public roads, you have a duty of care to obey traffic laws, pay attention to your surroundings, and react reasonably to hazards to ensure no one else on the road with you gets hurt in a preventable accident. However, the owners of the roads on which you drive also owe a duty of care to you and other drivers, requiring them to maintain their property in a safe condition and address hazards reasonably quickly after first discovering them.
If the owner of a road—whether they are a private individual, a corporation, or a local government body—fails to keep it in safe condition, they may hold civil liability for any injuries stemming directly from a hazard they did not properly address. Accordingly, if you were injured in a car accident caused by a defective road in Tempe, you may have grounds for legal action, which an auto injury attorney from Phillips Law Group can help you pursue.
Contrary to what many people might understandably assume, state and local governments are not responsible for maintaining every paved surface designated for the general public to operate motor vehicles on. For example, if someone were to collide with a pedestrian in a private parking lot because they hit a pothole while searching for a space, the private owner(s) of that private lot would likely be the ones at fault for any injuries stemming from that accident.
Likewise, if a government entity contracts with a third-party company to provide maintenance services to a public highway in Tempe, that private company may be considered liable for accidents caused by defects in the highway, since it was directly responsible for maintaining the road. It may even hold manufacturers strictly liable for certain types of road defects—for instance, an improperly assembled safety guardrail that gives way too easily when a vehicle strikes it.
Notably, Arizona is one of a few states that operates under the assumption that the government does not inherently have “sovereign immunity” from most forms of civil liability, except in certain exceptional situations carved out by state law. If a government entity does hold partial or primary liability for a traffic accident in Tempe stemming from a roadway defect, a person injured through that accident generally has the same standing to file suit over their injuries as they would if a private individual were at fault for causing them.
That said, there are specific filing procedures for claims of this nature that can be deceptively complex to navigate without guidance from experienced legal counsel. Perhaps most significantly, people who intend to sue a government entity over a personal injury in the Grand Canyon State have just 180 days to submit written notice of their claim to their prospective defendant(s), a significantly shorter filing period than the two years allowed for most other personal injury claims.
There are numerous roads in Tempe and across the Grand Canyon State that are in varying states of disrepair, and sometimes that disrepair is the primary cause of traffic crashes, outweighing any individually negligent act by any individual driver involved.
Fortunately, it is often possible to file a civil suit over car accidents caused by defective roads in Tempe and potentially hold multiple parties liable for your ensuing injuries and losses. Call Phillips Law Group today to learn more.
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