On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What is a statute?"

Our last episode covered statute of limitations.

A statute is not just about limitations.

In the United States, it's a law passed by representatives we elect to make those laws.

Statutes are published in an official code you could find on government websites.

When helping a client with a new situation, the first question I ask is, "What is the statute that applies to this situation?"

Statutes tell us our rights.

They tell us things we can do and can't do.

Sometimes they're specific and sometimes broad.

They give us a framework to operate in, like coloring between the lines.

Statutes sometimes give us the lines, and sometimes we have to trace that line.

While not always true, usually, when someone's referring to a law or the law, it's a statute.

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On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What is a statute of limitations?"

There's only so much time the law allows for you to recover damages, and that time frame is something we call a statute of limitations.

Every jurisdiction has a different statute of limitations for different things.

A two-year statute of limitations means you have to file a lawsuit within two years to get damages.

Statute of limitations don't just apply in civil law.

There are criminal laws where charges have to be brought in a certain amount of time to face criminal penalties.

In the law, there's usually an exception to every rule. Sometimes there's a pause on that time frame, or what we call "tolling."

If somebody is keeping a secret, that might delay the statute of limitations until the secret is found out.

So always check your statute of limitations.

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On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What is a tort?"

Over the last month, we've talked about negligence and the elements of negligence.

In a legal context, negligence is a tort, and a tort is something somebody does they weren't supposed to do, that we call a wrongful act.

It's not criminal law, where you get in trouble with the police.

This is called civil law.

Other versions are intentional torts and strict liability.

An intentional tort is basically somebody not being very nice to somebody else on purpose in such a way that it goes against their rights.

The things they get to have by being in our society.

Strict liability means there doesn't need to be an intention or even an accident.

It just means that if something happened, then another person or company can be responsible for that.

Quick recap: three kind of torts are intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability.

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On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What is a remedy?"

A remedy is how damages are paid.

For example, money, like we talked about last week, but there's other remedies.

Another example is injunctive relief.

That means you're asking a court to have somebody do or not do something.

If somebody is saying untrue things about you, a court could order that they stop doing it.

If you have secrets of a business, and you share them, then injunctive relief can be a court ordering you to delete or get rid of it.

If you were in a contract with somebody and the other person did their promise but you didn't keep your promise, a court could order you to keep your promise.

That's called specific performance.

If there's a disagreement about what a contract says, then a court order can provide declaratory relief, meaning the court will explain the actual meaning of those words in the contract.

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On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What are damages?"

Damages are what somebody gets from somebody else to put them in the same situation they would have been in had some bad thing not happened.

You damage someone else's car.

Their car gets repaired.

The money it costs to get that car repaired, are damages.

If somebody gets hurt, and they have to go to the doctor, money paid to the doctor are damages, too.

It could be damages to a person.

It could be damages to property.

And it could also be damages if there was a breach of contract.

If somebody promised to do something, the other person owed them money, and if that money's not paid.

That's monetary damages.

Sometimes the damages are so low that it doesn't make sense to file a lawsuit.

You also have to be able to prove damages.

Just because you have damages, if you can't prove it, then you won't be able to win a lawsuit.

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On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What is causation?"

Causation is when one thing happens because of another.

In the law, causation is when you do something that causes something else that has a consequence.

Think back to our episode on negligence. If cars in front of you were stopping at a red light and you went to press the brake but didn't press it soon enough, that may cause the front of your car to make contact with the back of the car in front of you. Accidentally not stopping caused that accident. That's an actual cause or a but-for cause.

Proximate causation means somebody did something that caused something else that caused something else. Let's say your friend spun you around making you so dizzy that it was not safe to drive, but you drove anyway. If you cause an accident because you were too dizzy, your friend might also be responsible if there's an accident.

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On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What is assuming a duty?"

When you live in a society like we do, we have to follow the rules. A lot of those are legal responsibilities or duties.

When somebody falls down, and you offer to help them up, then you assumed that responsibility to help them up without causing them to get hurt when you didn't have a legal obligation to help them.

If you assumed that duty and breached it, and that caused them to get hurt, then they may have damages and you're responsible.

The law does not require that you help that person up. When you do, you're taking on additional responsibility.

We have something called Good Samaritan Laws.

As long as your attempts to help somebody when you're assuming a duty are reasonable, then that would act as a defense to them trying to say that you were negligent if they got hurt.

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On today’s episode, Mathew Kerbis, The Subscription Attorney, answers the question, "What is negligence?"

Negligence has four parts that have to be proven. (1) The first is you have a duty or a responsibility. (2) You breach that duty or you don't do the thing you were supposed to do. (3) Causation is the third part. By not doing what you're supposed to do, that causes somebody to have (4) damages. That could mean that they're hurt, or something that belonged to them got broken. A real world example is a car accident. You have a legal responsibility to drive safely and not cause an accident with another car on the road. If you do, that means you breached that duty. If causing the accident also caused some damage to that person's vehicle or they got hurt, then they may have damages.

That's negligence.

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