What's My Case Worth?
How will it be valued?
I wish I could wave a magic wand, or create a “case value” calculator,
to give you a quick and accurate answer to this question.
The problem is, your case is worth one of two things:
- It is worth what a jury composed of people we have never meet will
say it is worth, after hearing all the evidence, or,
- It is worth what
a particular insurance company or defendant is willing to pay after
consulting with their attorney. In other words, to some extent, we
are just guessing.
On the other hand, cases do seem to settle most of the time for amounts
that do not surprise us. Similarly, jury verdicts
tend to fall mostly into the area of value that seems reasonable for
the facts of the case.
Jurors have no more experience at case evaluation than you do. So,
what do they consider?
For one thing, jurors always want to know what
the “special damages” are.
In other words, “How much were the medical
bills?” “How
much was the wage loss?” “Did the plaintiff lose anything
else that they had to pay for out of pocket?”
Another critical point seems to be, “How
bad was the collision?” Jurors
correlate injuries with damage to the vehicles and your riding gear.
If your leathers were torn up sliding on the pavement, this is an
important piece of evidence [even though it may really show that your safety
gear protected you by taking the damage]. A helmet
with accident markings on it, or a badly
bent up bike will have a similar effect. Doctors
and lawyers who have seen the injured from many accidents know that
there isn't always a correlation between the damage to property
and the damage to the rider, but even these experienced professionals
and the jury seems to be affected by visual
evidence of a “bad
accident”.
The injuries themselves range from injuries that heal in a relatively
short time, to injuries that will last a lifetime. The
more permanent an injury is, the more value it has for settlement or
trial. This
is obvious. A cut that heals has nowhere near the value of a permanent
scar.
Injuries increase in value as the injury interferes
more with daily activity and particularly your work. An injury that prevents you
from doing your occupation, or interferes with function on a daily
basis, will be worth more.
Injuries must be documented before anyone will
compensate you for them. You many live with pain every day, but an adjuster or a juror
will pretty much feel that if your injury wasn't worth getting treatment
for, it didn't bother you enough that they will pay you for having
it.
When you see a doctor, or testify in your deposition, your description
of your difficulty will make a huge difference in how your injury
is valued. Compare: “My hand hurts”, to, “I can't
use a metal cutter at work, because my hand gets too painful when I
try to squeeze the handles to make a cut.” The
more specifics, the more value. The more that you (or someone else), can describe in
detain how the injury affects you, the more value that injury has.
Again, compare “my hand hurts when I work” to , “When
I use my hand to operate equipment at work, I get a pain on the back
of the hand between where the second and third fingers are, and it
travels all the way back to my wrist. It gets worse very quickly if
I try to continue using it”. Which has more value?
What costs will you incur in the future? Medical bills? Will you
need ongoing assistance at home? At one end of the spectrum are the
spinal cord cases, where an accident may prevent the plaintiff even
from breathing or moving without help. At the low end of the spectrum
is the case of someone who will have pain and stiffness for only
a few months.
Those cases that result in the multi-million dollar
awards are the cases where there is a multi-million dollar injury.
Believe me, the plaintiffs in those cases deserve every dollar.
A good exercise to do in evaluating your case, is to pretend
you are a juror. Think about what the evidence
will be at trial. Who
will present it? What will they say? Will your doctors say that this
is a severe and debilitating injury, or will they minimize it because
they see this type of injury all the time? What will your co-workers
and friends say? Will they be convincing in testifying that you will
never be the same and your life is a horror? Or will they say you
seem to be pretty normal again? Think about what YOU would award
SOMEONE ELSE if you were on the jury. If you are truly honest in
doing this, you will have a reasonable idea of what your case is
worth. Remember, the jurors don't know you, don't really want to be there, and are
very skeptical. They aren't there for a giveaway – they
know about the insurance company commercials depicting greedy plaintiffs,
and they know that the President doesn't like our system of compensating
accident victims.
Now that you understand how your case is valued, you probably also
understand why a good lawyer has a lot of work to do to present your
case.
Call and let us help you now!
Call us toll-free at 1-800-928-1511 (anytime day or night) for your free consultation and expert advice on your motorcycle
accident case.
Michael Padway & Associates
595 Market Street, Ste 2520
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-777-1511
800-928-1511
Contact Michael Padway & Associates
