Example Of Personal Injury Claim Where Insurance Company Made Low Ball Offer To Severely Hurt Plaintiff
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-06-30 13:09:43 | Word Count: 520
In this article we talk about yet another claim in which an insurer made only low ball offers to settle a car case in which the victim sustained a severe injury. In this case an injury that definitely affected the plaintiff's ability to work.
In this case an individual driving an SUV was involved in an accident with bicyclist. As per the bicyclist, the driver was coming in the opposite direction when, without warning, he made a U-turn right in front of him causing the victim to go over the SUV's hood. The plaintiff suffered from a wrist injury in which his cartilage was torn. Due to his injury he had difficulties when he went back to work as a mechanic with a dealership of high-end motor vehicles. Testimony from a physician pointed out that the bicyclist will probably need surgery to fuse the bones in his wrist at some point in the future and that when this occurs it will probably stop him from continuing to hold down a job as a mechanic. Consequently the plaintiff would probably not be able to make as much money in the future leading to a loss of earning capacity.
[ advertisement ]
During its investigation into the circumstances of the case the law firm that represented the victim discovered that when the accident happened the driver was test-driving the SUV on behalf of his employer. The purpose of the test drive was to create an advertising review of the vehicle.
Part of this amount ($250,000) was for economic damages and part ($300,000) was for the non-economic damages such as pain and suffering and the nature of the injury.
Here we have a claim where fault was not an issue. What was an issue was the value of the plaintiff's injuries. The insurer likely looked at this claim as just involving a minor injury that resolved itself in a short amount of time. With this perspective an offer of $30,000 might seen reasonable.
But the law firm that helped the bicyclist positioned the case so that it was not about an injury from which there was a full recovery but about an injury that would do even more significant damage in the future. The injury may not have required surgery immediately but it created enough damage to the wrist that it would require in all likelihood, not only surgery but a fusion. And this would probably put an end to the plaintiff's career as a mechanic of high-end cars. By letting the jury consider the total effect of the injury the law firm was able to attain a verdict over 18 times the sum offered by the insurer.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting catastrophic injury cases. To learn more about how a bicycle accident attorney can help you or to learn about other vehicle accident cases including pedestrian accident cases visit the websites
