Personal Injury

Trials can take a few days to a few weeks depending on their complexity. In simple personal injury cases, you can expect a few days to a week. During this time, you would need to be available for 8+ hours per day for up to a week, which means you’d have to take time off of work. Going to Trial is tedious and time-consuming, and your attorney devotes his entire days at work towards preparation for Trial during the few months preceding the Trial date.

Going to Trial should be the last resort. Why? Because not only do my attorney’s fees jump from 33 1/3% to 40%, but this is when the true litigation and discovery process begins, meaning the costs on the case skyrocket to cover expenses such as depositions, experts, and preparing for Trial. Further, and most importantly, going to Trial can be a roll of the dice as you never know what a jury is thinking or going to do. Also, there may be a circumstance where if you get nothing or a certain amount lower than what was offered to settle the case by the Defendant in a proposal for settlement, you may have to pay the other attorney’s costs.

Settling your case involves you receiving a lump-sum of money, tax free, in exchange for dismissing your personal injury case against the party with whom you’re settling. After deducting attorney’s fees and costs, the remainder is used to pay any medical bills or liens on the case, usually at a lower negotiated amount, and then what’s left goes into your pocket to use however you wish. If we settled before filing a lawsuit, the attorney’s fees would be 33 1/3% of the settlement; if we settled after filing a lawsuit, attorney’s fees would be 40% of the settlement. 

This is the preferred way of resolving a case because it’s usually done before we file a lawsuit or spend a lot in costs, meaning more money in your pocket. However, in my experience, insurance companies only pay the policy limits when the policy limits are low (less than $25,000), the damages in the case are way more than what the policy limits cover ($200,000 in damages verses a $10,000 policy), and/or when there is no question that the defendant is liable for the accident (such as the defendant rear-ending you while you were stopped at a red-light). This usually occurs before filing a lawsuit, meaning attorney’s fees would be 33 1/3% of the settlement.

There are three ways you can resolve your personal injury case: (1) The defendant or its insurance company just pays the policy limits, which is rare; (2) We settle your case, which happens most-often; or (3) We go to Trial and get a jury verdict, which occurs the least-often and is the last resort if either options (1) or (2) don’t occur.

Punitive damages, otherwise known as punishment damages, are awarded when the defendant knew that his/her/its conduct would have a high chance of causing injury(ies), and that the specific conduct reveals a disregard for life and/or safety. Punitive damages are capped at three times the amount of compensatory damages (financial losses) or at $500,000.00. A typical example of when punitive damages may apply is when the defendant is intoxicated such as driving under the influence (“DUI”).

This form of damages is similar to pain and suffering in that there’s no formula and it’s an arbitrary number; however, it’s based on the things that you are either limited in doing or are no longer able to do or enjoy in your life due to your injuries. What is the value of being unable to fish or ride a bike anymore? In being limited in what you can do with your children or how often you can go to church? The value is based on what other people feel that losing those things you enjoyed doing would be worth. This is why it’s often important to find jurors who have similar interests as you in order to have a better chance of getting more money towards these damages since the juror can put a value on how much they’d want in return for not being able to do the same activity.

Unlike medical care or lost wages, there is no attributable formula for calculating pain and suffering. It’s an arbitrary number picked out of thin air. However, the severity and value of your medical care as well as the amount in lost wages drives the value of pain and suffering. Why? Because one can reasonably assume that you’ve experienced more pain and suffering if you’ve had surgery and haven’t been able to return to work in over a year due to your injuries than if you’ve only received physical therapy and haven’t missed any work. The more severe and expensive the treatment and the more time lost from work equates to more pain and suffering, which makes sense.

If you were in a car accident, your vehicle may be damaged or totaled. If your vehicle was damaged, either you or your insurance may pay to have it repaired. If your vehicle was totaled, an appraisal will be conducted to see its value before it was totaled. Thus, property damage is calculated based on the cost of the repairs or the vehicle’s value before it was totaled. If the repairs were paid, we’d ask for reimbursement; if the repairs were not paid or the vehicle is totaled, we would ask for money to make the repairs or to pay for the value of the vehicle before it was totaled.