As soon as someone suffers an injury from someone elses fault, related to ignorance, act of negligence or acceptance, the person who suffered the injury might be entitled to a compensation (in the form of money) for the injury. If it can be proven that the other person caused an injury! Proving time as well as place are crucial in such cases, this can be very hard to accomplish in some cases and be absolutly no problem at all in another case.
An example case could look like the following:
A young woman from West Virginia is called by her husband in the streets. She turns around to see him and in this moment bumps into an older lady. The older lady drops and breaks her hip. The young woman had no intention what so ever, it was a classic accident.
Still the old lady is entitled to a compensation by the young woman.
How high the compensation might be depends upon the injury itself. For example the compensation for a hematoma will be lesser then the compensation for a car accident (side note: see DUI defense). However the biggest compensations in the past have been paid for victims of Mesothelioma a form of cancer caused by asbestos.
Proving the place as well as the time of the accident is often a problem. This is part of the job for the Personal Injury Attorney, who are most often very experienced in such cases and with whom you have the best chances to be compensated. Furthermore some of them have a background in criminal law as criminal defense lawyers/attorneys, which comes in handy if there is a chance that it was not only an accident but maybe intentional.