legal injury
- noun
- /ˈliːɡəl ˈɪndʒəri/
- Formal
- The plaintiff suffered a legal injury due to negligence.
Examples
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Without evidence of a legal injury, a lawsuit cannot proceed in this case.
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You must demonstrate a legal injury to be entitled to damages under the law.
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The court found that the plaintiff suffered a legal injury when his rights were violated.
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Have you ever experienced a legal injury?
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The company filed a lawsuit claiming legal injury after their intellectual property was unlawfully used by a competitor.
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She sought compensation for the legal injury caused by the breach of her contract with the supplier.
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The court evaluated the legal injury and determined that the victim was entitled to damages for her suffering.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Harm that makes something less useful, valuable, or healthy
820
1.0
A bad effect on people or things
94
2.3
Harm to a person's rights, reputation, or property that can lead to legal action
How Severe
- Formal
820
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'legal' (pertaining to law) modifies 'injury' (harm), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to harm recognized under the law or as grounds for a claim. Although somewhat formal legal jargon, it follows a regular adjective+noun pattern and is therefore readily understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
Legal injury comes from the simple image of legal (the law) plus injury ('harm'): imagine someone breaks your bike and the law treats that harm as something it can act on, so you can ask a court to fix it. That's why legal injury means 'harm the law recognizes so you can ask the court for help'.