Example Of How An Insurance Company May Mistakenly Undervalue A Plaintiff's Personal Injury Claim
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-10-29 02:40:46 | Word Count: 504
In this article we go over yet one more lawsuit in which an insurer made only low ball offers to settle a car case in which the victim sustained a considerable injury, this time an injury that genuinely affected the plaintiff's ability to work.
In this situation an individual driving an SUV was involved in an accident with bicyclist. The bicyclist reported seeing the driver come from the opposite direction then make a U-turn immediately in front of him giving him no time to stop his bicycle. He ended up going over the hood of the vehicle. The plaintiff suffered from a wrist injury in which his cartilage was torn. Due to his injury he had problems when he went back to his job as a mechanic with a dealership of high-end motor vehicles. And a physician testified that the bicyclist's wrist will probably eventually need to be fused and that this will probably end his career as a mechanic. Because of this the victim would probably not be able to make as much money in the future leading to a loss of earning capacity.
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During its investigation into the circumstances of the case the law firm that represented the victim found that , at the time of the accident, the driver was test-driving the SUV for his employer. The purpose of the test drive was to create an advertising review of the vehicle.
Part of this sum ($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 situation where liability was not an issue. What was in dispute was the value of the bicyclist's injuries. The insurer almost certainly perceived this lawsuit as only regarding a minor injury that resolved itself relatively fast. With this perspective an offer of $30,000 may appear appropriate.
But the law firm that helped the victim positioned the matter so that it was not about an injury from which there was a full recovery but about an injury that would come back to haunt the victim in the future. The injury may not have needed surgery immediately but it caused 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 impact of the injury the law firm was able to attain a verdict over eighteen times the amount 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
