Wayne just broke his leg, so people are commenting about how lucky it is that his wife is a lawyer. He slipped on ice in a church parking lot and they probably have deep enough pockets, probably insurance, and since they had removed the snow, they had a duty to remove it properly, meaning to spread out sand or salt to prevent accumulation of new ice on the lot. So it seems clear that he could win the lawsuit lottery with this, right?
Wrong. We thank God his injuries are limited to his leg. A slip and fall of that variety often causes spine and head and arm injuries as well. And we thank his daughter for convincing us all that the new definition of "responsible" is to carry your cellphone at all times or he might have been laying in the freezing cold parking lot until someone discovered him. While it is excruciatingly painful and has required surgery with a titanium rod placed in it, this slip and fall could have been a lot worse. He had to take off work, but we are promised that he will be back to speed soon, barring complications. As long as all goes well, his injuries will not be our new retirement plan and the neighborhood church will not have to go bankrupt over making my husband whole.
Let me go through the process of determining whether you are going to win the lawsuit lottery so that others have a chance of understanding the situation. First, we determine the financial amount of actual damages. That will be the full price of the emergency, hospital, doctor and followup services, plus the price of the time off work, plus any other services needed to make him whole. This is the actual damages. Second, we look at his pain and suffering. Typically, this will be measured not by the subjective amount of pain he feels that he has suffered, because everyone would feel that thier own injury was worth the highest value of suffering possible if that was the measuring stick. Typically, you take the value of the financial damages and multiply that by some factor (and that depends upon the local custom, generally), and that will be the price fo the damages. The theory is that the amount of suffering is higher if the amount of medical and therapy services you had to receive was higher.
Let me go through the process of determining whether you are going to win the lawsuit lottery so that others have a chance of understanding the situation. First, we determine the financial amount of actual damages. That will be the full price of the emergency, hospital, doctor and followup services, plus the price of the time off work, plus any other services needed to make him whole. This is the actual damages. Second, we look at his pain and suffering. Typically, this will be measured not by the subjective amount of pain he feels that he has suffered, because everyone would feel that thier own injury was worth the highest value of suffering possible if that was the measuring stick. Typically, you take the value of the financial damages and multiply that by some factor (and that depends upon the local custom, generally), and that will be the price fo the damages. The theory is that the amount of suffering is higher if the amount of medical and therapy services you had to receive was higher.
Then your lawyer will look to see if there are special things about this injury and this person that would justify higher value of loss. For example, is he a football player about to play in the Superbowl and loses this opportunity because of the break? My own "man of steel" will not get compensated for having a titanium rod placed in his leg a week before the superbowl because he is not playing in it. We may miss a superbowl party for the pain, so that might be compensable, but we will not be winning the lottery over this.
It occurs to me that many people are misled by big headlines about seemingly huge lawsuits based upon what we think of as stupid or small injuries. It's easy to envision your car wreck as your new retirement plan when you hear about someone suing for multi-millions over having gained weight for eating fast food, or winning millions for spilling hot coffee on themselves. I call it the “lawsuit lottery”, because people are hoping for lottery sized winnings off a minor accident. The problem is that in reading the headlines of seemingly minor injuries, we do not see the pain and work behind them. We do not see the months of therapy, the time in life lost because of third degree burns, or the extensive discovery process that proved the restaurant knew they were playing with fire (almost literally) by keeping their coffee excessively hot, in an effort to entice some customers. We do not get to see the awful stuff the jury saw that convinced them that their decision was fair, so it is not fair for us to second-guess it.
You can be sure that personal injury cases are not a big payoff for a person who is not seriously injured by behavior that was not highly irresponsible. The bottom line is to make you whole, compensate you for the time and enjoyment you lost while recovering, not turn you into a lifetime member of the jet-set.
When looking for a personal injury attorney, please ask about their realistic evaluation of the case and not accept optimistic promises without a reasonable explanation about how they intend to get it. Million dollar wins are usually only possible when your injuries are very serious, when someone has died, and your life is irreparably damaged. You do not want to be this person. This is suffering beyond a few days in the hospital and an uneventful recovery from that time. The people who win big awards have suffered big pain, and will continue to suffer, and hopefully, that will not happen to my husband, which does not mean he should not get compensated, just that we do not expect a huge, life-altering reward for his slip and fall case.
OK, so how do we evaluate the price of pain and suffering if it's not worth a billion dollars, it certainly is worth something, is it not? Well, we usually take the amount of financial damages and multiply it by some factor that seems reasonable based upon what local juries are likely to give. If you have $5,000 worth of medical bills and rehabilitation services, then you probably spent quite a lot less time in pain and off work than if you had $500,000 worth of medical bills and rehab services out of the case. So the way they determine pain and suffering is based upon hte price of the services you needed to get back to normal. If you cannot get made whole, but instead suffered permanent injuries, there will be a value built in for that. Think of this value as similar to the schedule you might have seen in a disability policy… X thousand for a lost limb… X thousand for a lost finger,… X thousand for loss of sight. Each type of injury has a different generally expected value, and unless you're a superbowl super kicker, the loss of your leg is not likely to be valued at any higher than the standard.
Your lawyer's job will be to calculate the total value of the financial damages, and find any area where your own suffering is special and exceeds the standard version of suffering, then negotiate with the insurer while preparing for trial, to convince the insurer that you deserve some value more than their standard number. It will be your lawyer's job to know what that standard number is, and look for ways to get more. This is not the type of thing a person can reasonably do for themselves without the assistance of a lawyer. Luckily, most lawyers will take personal injury cases on a contingency fee basis, meaning that they don't get paid unless you get paid, and you do not have to pay anything up front.
In most cases, your personal injury settlement will not be enough to burn the mortgage and quit your job, but every finanlized settlement is certainly worth a glass of champagne, because it means that the time of being a victim is over, and time to live your life has returned. Only someone who has been caught up in a difficult lawsuit could really understand the value of having a nice, normal, boring day of life.
In most cases, your personal injury settlement will not be enough to burn the mortgage and quit your job, but every finanlized settlement is certainly worth a glass of champagne, because it means that the time of being a victim is over, and time to live your life has returned. Only someone who has been caught up in a difficult lawsuit could really understand the value of having a nice, normal, boring day of life.
It is hard, when you are the one who did the suffering, to envision someone realistically placing a dollar value on the suffering, and no dollar value seems to be high enough when the suffering is YOURS, but this is what insurers and attorneys do every day, and so understand that they will talk numbers that sound more like giving you extra compensation for the time you had to take off work, and paying for your crutches, than like paying off your house and car. No one will ever be able to make it as if the accident never happened, but insurers and attorneys are there to find a number that will reasonable help you out. Do not hesitate to call one, but be prepared to understand that your loss will be judges against all other losses that have come before you, and may not be worth as much as you hope.
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