Determining Compensation in Personal Injury Cases

Determining how much an injured person should be compensated is an extremely important part of my job. This is a question which you sometimes get vastly different answers depending on who you ask. If you ask an injured party, it is very personal to them and they have their own unique view of how the accident has hurt them and disrupted their life. On the other hand, an insurance adjuster has not gone through the daily issues that an injured party has faced, and instead must evaluate the claim based on a stack of papers. Despite that obvious difference or perspectives, many claims are able to reach a resolution without a jury having to decide the issue.

There are many parts to the "compensation" issue, but they break down into two general categories: property damage and bodily injury . The property damage category refers to getting your car repaired if it can be fixed or replaced if it is "totaled." The availability of rental cars comes into play here. Property damage claims can, and usually are, resolved very soon after the accident (assuming the insurance company accepts liability) well before your bodily injury claim is resolved. See Property Damage: Getting Your Car Repaired or Replaced and Rental Car Issues.

So how is the bodily injury part of the claim evaluated? In determining their offer, the insurance company looks at the severity of impact, the amount of property damage, the types of medical treatment, the results of diagnostic tests (MRI's X-rays, CT Scans...), length of treatment, charges made by the medical professionals and the type of lost wage documentation provided to them.

If you are injured, you have suffered pain. This is an important element of your damages. How to quantify this pain is difficult. It is part of my job to explain your pain and the effect the injuries have had on your life. See Damages Recoverable in an Injury Claim.

It is up to the injured party (or his or her attorney) to put the right evidence in front of the adjuster. An experienced injury attorney will have a good feel for what the value of the case should be, taking into account the specifics of the case and how juries are receptive to those types of cases. The adjuster usually doesn't do their own investigation of the injury part of the claim--especially if they do not have a medical authorization (I never give the insurance adjuster a blanket authorization to go fishing for past injuries or to talk to my client's doctors).

Usually the injured party or their attorney makes a settlement demand to which the insurance company will respond. The settlement offer by the insurance company is not broken down into separate dollar amounts for the various recoverable damages (bills, wages, pain and suffering, etc.). It is one lump sum amount considering all of the facts. Lots of times negotiations will follow and a settlement can be reached. Not all cases resolve at this stage and a lawsuit will need to be filed. Once suit is filed, many things happen--one of which is another chance to resolve the case before a trial occurs. Only a small portion of cases where a lawsuit is filed ever actually get tried, but the attorney must be ready and willing to try the case every single time. If the case is tried before a jury, then the jury will hear all of the evidence presented and they will be the one who make the decision on how much the injured party should be compensated.

Determining the value of a particular case is a very subjective assessment. An experienced attorney can make the assessment, which is just an opinion, after a thorough review of all of the facts. If you would like to discuss your injury claim, please call me at 817-294-1900 or Contact Me Online.