Personal Injuries
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The purpose of a personal injury case is to obtain compensation for someone who has sustained an injury for which someone else is legally responsible. This typically is when someone has an injury caused by another person’s careless or intentional conduct, a defective product or a failure to adequately warn the injured person of a particular danger.
The objective of a personal injury case is to obtain money to compensate the injured person. This can be compensation for medical and other healthcare expenses, lost wages, other income, loss of the capacity to earn income, other out-of-pocket expenses, in-home care, disability and pain and suffering. These are called “damages.” The biggest component of the damages often consists of compensation for pain and suffering. The amount of money obtained for pain and suffering depends upon the nature and extent of the injury, the length of recovery and, often, the amount of the healthcare expenses.
Mr. Alger normally first attempts to settle a personal injury case directly with the insurance carrier for the person who is responsible for his client’s injury. This usually is the most economical and quickest way to settle a case. If the case is not settled directly with the insurance carrier, a lawsuit is filed. Most cases are then settled at a mediation hearing. This is a situation where Mr. Alger and his client get together with the attorney for the defendant/insurance company and a mediator. A mediator is a third person – normally another lawyer or a retired judge – who works to get the parties to come to an agreement to settle the case.
If mediation does not work, then the case can be resolved by a jury trial, an arbitration hearing before an arbitrator who acts in the capacity of judge, a trial before a judge without a jury, or at a settlement conference shortly before the trial is scheduled to take place. The vast majority of personal injury cases are settled without a trial, even after a lawsuit has been filed.
A personal injury case does not have a firm, set value. There are no schedules or formulas for determining settlement values. There are, however, certain parameters for determining how much money a client can get for a personal injury case.
In theory, the settlement value of a personal injury case is based upon what a jury would award for the case in a trial. However, many lawyers may not want to admit it, but no one really knows what a jury will award. Juries have awarded vastly different sums of money for personal injury cases that involve the same kinds of injuries. Therefore, jury awards are unpredictable. At most, they establish a wide range of valuation for cases involving certain types of injuries.
Despite the uncertainty provided by jury verdicts, certain types of cases do have accepted settlement values. These values typically are based upon what insurance companies will pay to settle a case and what both trial judges and injury lawyers consider an accepted settlement value. Knowledge of these values is based upon experience. Therefore, in order to determine the value of a personal injury case, a lawyer must be experienced in settling personal injury cases.
What an insurance company will pay to settle a case is not always sufficient. In such a case, a client may choose to go to trial. However, a trial is fraught with uncertainty. In a trial, a jury or judge will decide how much money the client should be awarded as compensation for the client’s injuries and other damages. A jury may award much more or much less money than an insurance company would pay in settlement. The amount of money a jury will award depends upon the people who are on the jury and how the testimony and other evidence develops during the trial. Therefore, no one knows for sure what a jury will award.
