What is My Case Worth?
Chapter 6: What is my Auto Collision Case Worth?
Many of my clients come to me hurt, in debt from their medical bills and wondering how the justice system can help them. There are a multitude of Atlanta injury lawyers to choose from and some advertise and some don't. When a client begins the search for a car accident lawyer they should keep one question in the forefront: Is this person telling me hard facts of the situation or is it all BS? In this chapter, we will discuss the answer to the question; what is my case worth?
Allright, so what is my case worth? The short answer to that question is that each case is different. There are several factors that play into the answer and each is important. In this portion, we will go through the factors and then we will cover some case by case examples.
Factor #1: The Seriousness of the Injury
This is by far the most important factor. Put simply, the more serious the injury is, the more a jury will care and the more they will award in damages. Cases come in all sizes. I handle wrongful death cases where the damages are in excess of one million dollars. I also handle some cases where the injuries are modest and the client has only emergency room bills, although that is rare.
The most common type of case that the courts see are soft tissue muscle strain and sprain cases. Some are serious and some are mild and within each case there are degrees of merit and value. If the client treated moderately and made a good recovery after physical therapy, then the jury will of course care, but they are not going to award the moon.
Some people with soft tissue cases make a poor recovery and continue to struggle with issues for years. If the medical testimony is credible, then the jury can return a sizeable verdict.
For a soft tissue case, one of the dominant factors is how bad the damage to the car looks. Jurors are less likely to believe that an injury occurred if there is minimal damage to the vehicle. These days, it does not take much to cause $1,000.00 in damage to a car, so the best predictor of the jury’s concern for the client is what the damage looks like. If it looks serious then the jury will take the case seriously.
Fractures, scars, mild traumatic brain injuries, concussions, broken noses; each injury is unique and brings a different value to the table. In truth there is no one size fits all answer but I will give some exemplars below.
The amount of the damage to the car, the dollar total of the gross medical bills, the total amount of the lost wages and the nature of the injury and how long it took to recover; these are all components of the seriousness of the injury.
In catastrophic cases, I hire a life care plan expert to testify about what it will take care for the disabled for the rest of their life. We can hire expert economists to calculate financial impact of a lifetime away from work. These are complex issues in serious cases and I work with my clients to understand what is involved at every level.
Factor #2: The Client’s Personality
It would seem obvious but many clients are surprised to hear that their personality drastically affects the value of a case. The true value of a case is decided by 12 jurors sitting in judgment of the facts and if they like you, they award more money. If they don’t like you well…. It goes the other way. I have had cases made and broken by the client’s personality. What I advise all my clients before deposition and before trial is to remember that jurors like the person that is responsible, not a whiner, helps themselves out and does their best. Be kind, be forgiving be the kind of neighbor the juror wants on her street. Don’t exaggerate and speak with earnestness of what you have gone through. Jurors are very good as sorting the B.S. from the truth and they will award a verdict accordingly.
Factor #3: Venue
Venue for Georgia State and Superior and Magistrate Court cases is the County in which the case will be tried. All residents of Georgia, be they corporations or people, are entitled to be sued in their home county. There are a few notable exceptions for tractor trailer collisions and for cases involving multiple defendants, but as a general rule, this holds true. Generally speaking, urban, lower-income jury pools tend to award higher verdicts for damages and insurance companies know this. For the Atlanta area, I would rank the most favorable counties to bring a case in as follows 1) Clayton County, 2) Dekalb County, 3) Fulton County, 4) Gwinnett County. Gwinnett is changing rapidly and in my opinion is getting more and more Plaintiff friendly all the time. Outside of Columbus, Macon and parts of Savannah and Glynn County, the rest of the State is fairly conservative and juries do not give money away.
Therefore when evaluating a case, it is important to know where the suit will eventually be brought.
Factor #4: Liability Insurance
The hardest news I have to deliver to some clients is the fact that our practical ability to make a dollar amount recovery for them is controlled to an extent by the amount of insurance the defendant caries. We have handled wrongful death cases where there is only $50,000.00 in liability insurance and the defendant does not have any personal assets. While the case is clearly worth over a million dollars, the $50,000.00 is sometimes the only money available. The old adage is true; you cannot get blood from a stone.
Insurance plays another roll. Many clients don’t want to go to trial and are only interested in getting the suit settled. Each insurance company has a different personality, as do the individual adjusters. Over time, I have developed a mental rolodex containing information on the behavior of each company. I am adept at predicting how the insurers will behave in the pre-suit phase. I also frequently advise my client that certain carriers are litigious and that it will take a jury trial to bring the carrier to heel.
Insurance therefore is a powerful factor in answering what a case is worth, both before and after litigation has been filed and this must be explored with an experienced trial lawyer.
Real Value Examples
Client struck in head on collision with her Ford Expedition totaled. She had emergency room bills of $3,400.00. Infinity insurance refused to pay more than $4,000.00 before trial. Trial verdict of $9,500.00 for the client because client was able to explain how she had to miss out on her 20th anniversary family reunion while laid up in a hotel bed in Florida due to the injuries.
Rear-end collision with $3,500.00 in property damage to the car. Defendant was insured with Progressive insurance. The client had a $500.00 emergency room bill and $3,000 in chiropractic bills. Progressive would only offer $3800.00 before the lawsuit. Case ultimately settled for $7,000.00.
Client sustained a concussion and some memory loss in a collision that caused $10,000.00 in damage to her vehicle. She did not go to the doctor for over a week and did not complain about memory problems until over a month after the collision. No offer before suit and I took the case over from another lawyer. After State Farm Insurance deposed three of my clients treating physicians who all testified that she had post concussive syndrome, we were able to get State Farm to pay the limits of their policy of $100,000.00.
Client was killed in an industrial accident and the case settled in suit for an amount in excess of one million dollars.
Client sustained a femur fracture with open reduction internal fixation surgery after a bad head on collision. Farm Bureau paid $250,000.00 policy limits after being presented with over $70,000.00 in medical bills from Grady hospital and plastic surgery estimates to correct some eyelid scarring.
Client sustained soft tissue injuries and treated with the emergency room and physical therapy near Elijay Georgia after a bad head-on collision. Although her medical bills only came to $3,500.00, we were able to present a lost wages claim of over $3,000.00 and ultimately settled the case for $15,000.00 with Liberty Mutual Insurance.
Many of my clients come to me hurt, in debt from their medical bills and wondering how the justice system can help them. There are a multitude of Atlanta injury lawyers to choose from and some advertise and some don't. When a client begins the search for a car accident lawyer they should keep one question in the forefront: Is this person telling me hard facts of the situation or is it all BS? In this chapter, we will discuss the answer to the question; what is my case worth?
Allright, so what is my case worth? The short answer to that question is that each case is different. There are several factors that play into the answer and each is important. In this portion, we will go through the factors and then we will cover some case by case examples.
Factor #1: The Seriousness of the Injury
This is by far the most important factor. Put simply, the more serious the injury is, the more a jury will care and the more they will award in damages. Cases come in all sizes. I handle wrongful death cases where the damages are in excess of one million dollars. I also handle some cases where the injuries are modest and the client has only emergency room bills, although that is rare.
The most common type of case that the courts see are soft tissue muscle strain and sprain cases. Some are serious and some are mild and within each case there are degrees of merit and value. If the client treated moderately and made a good recovery after physical therapy, then the jury will of course care, but they are not going to award the moon.
Some people with soft tissue cases make a poor recovery and continue to struggle with issues for years. If the medical testimony is credible, then the jury can return a sizeable verdict.
For a soft tissue case, one of the dominant factors is how bad the damage to the car looks. Jurors are less likely to believe that an injury occurred if there is minimal damage to the vehicle. These days, it does not take much to cause $1,000.00 in damage to a car, so the best predictor of the jury’s concern for the client is what the damage looks like. If it looks serious then the jury will take the case seriously.
Fractures, scars, mild traumatic brain injuries, concussions, broken noses; each injury is unique and brings a different value to the table. In truth there is no one size fits all answer but I will give some exemplars below.
The amount of the damage to the car, the dollar total of the gross medical bills, the total amount of the lost wages and the nature of the injury and how long it took to recover; these are all components of the seriousness of the injury.
In catastrophic cases, I hire a life care plan expert to testify about what it will take care for the disabled for the rest of their life. We can hire expert economists to calculate financial impact of a lifetime away from work. These are complex issues in serious cases and I work with my clients to understand what is involved at every level.
Factor #2: The Client’s Personality
It would seem obvious but many clients are surprised to hear that their personality drastically affects the value of a case. The true value of a case is decided by 12 jurors sitting in judgment of the facts and if they like you, they award more money. If they don’t like you well…. It goes the other way. I have had cases made and broken by the client’s personality. What I advise all my clients before deposition and before trial is to remember that jurors like the person that is responsible, not a whiner, helps themselves out and does their best. Be kind, be forgiving be the kind of neighbor the juror wants on her street. Don’t exaggerate and speak with earnestness of what you have gone through. Jurors are very good as sorting the B.S. from the truth and they will award a verdict accordingly.
Factor #3: Venue
Venue for Georgia State and Superior and Magistrate Court cases is the County in which the case will be tried. All residents of Georgia, be they corporations or people, are entitled to be sued in their home county. There are a few notable exceptions for tractor trailer collisions and for cases involving multiple defendants, but as a general rule, this holds true. Generally speaking, urban, lower-income jury pools tend to award higher verdicts for damages and insurance companies know this. For the Atlanta area, I would rank the most favorable counties to bring a case in as follows 1) Clayton County, 2) Dekalb County, 3) Fulton County, 4) Gwinnett County. Gwinnett is changing rapidly and in my opinion is getting more and more Plaintiff friendly all the time. Outside of Columbus, Macon and parts of Savannah and Glynn County, the rest of the State is fairly conservative and juries do not give money away.
Therefore when evaluating a case, it is important to know where the suit will eventually be brought.
Factor #4: Liability Insurance
The hardest news I have to deliver to some clients is the fact that our practical ability to make a dollar amount recovery for them is controlled to an extent by the amount of insurance the defendant caries. We have handled wrongful death cases where there is only $50,000.00 in liability insurance and the defendant does not have any personal assets. While the case is clearly worth over a million dollars, the $50,000.00 is sometimes the only money available. The old adage is true; you cannot get blood from a stone.
Insurance plays another roll. Many clients don’t want to go to trial and are only interested in getting the suit settled. Each insurance company has a different personality, as do the individual adjusters. Over time, I have developed a mental rolodex containing information on the behavior of each company. I am adept at predicting how the insurers will behave in the pre-suit phase. I also frequently advise my client that certain carriers are litigious and that it will take a jury trial to bring the carrier to heel.
Insurance therefore is a powerful factor in answering what a case is worth, both before and after litigation has been filed and this must be explored with an experienced trial lawyer.
Real Value Examples
Client struck in head on collision with her Ford Expedition totaled. She had emergency room bills of $3,400.00. Infinity insurance refused to pay more than $4,000.00 before trial. Trial verdict of $9,500.00 for the client because client was able to explain how she had to miss out on her 20th anniversary family reunion while laid up in a hotel bed in Florida due to the injuries.
Rear-end collision with $3,500.00 in property damage to the car. Defendant was insured with Progressive insurance. The client had a $500.00 emergency room bill and $3,000 in chiropractic bills. Progressive would only offer $3800.00 before the lawsuit. Case ultimately settled for $7,000.00.
Client sustained a concussion and some memory loss in a collision that caused $10,000.00 in damage to her vehicle. She did not go to the doctor for over a week and did not complain about memory problems until over a month after the collision. No offer before suit and I took the case over from another lawyer. After State Farm Insurance deposed three of my clients treating physicians who all testified that she had post concussive syndrome, we were able to get State Farm to pay the limits of their policy of $100,000.00.
Client was killed in an industrial accident and the case settled in suit for an amount in excess of one million dollars.
Client sustained a femur fracture with open reduction internal fixation surgery after a bad head on collision. Farm Bureau paid $250,000.00 policy limits after being presented with over $70,000.00 in medical bills from Grady hospital and plastic surgery estimates to correct some eyelid scarring.
Client sustained soft tissue injuries and treated with the emergency room and physical therapy near Elijay Georgia after a bad head-on collision. Although her medical bills only came to $3,500.00, we were able to present a lost wages claim of over $3,000.00 and ultimately settled the case for $15,000.00 with Liberty Mutual Insurance.