Do I Have a Personal Injury Case?

(Video interview transcript)
It's the rare individual that comes in to see me that doesn't ask sooner or later, "Do I have a case?" or "What do you think of my case?" or "What kind of case do I have?" It's a very common question we see it all the time. And while an answer to the question "What is my case worth?" can seldom be given with any confidence or reliability on an initial visit, in fact some people characterize it as malpractice to evaluate a case on a first visit because you don't know the extent of a clients injuries. You usually can tell the client what the likelihood of a case going forward and resulting in a settlement or verdict in their favor is and the reason is that cases have two principle elements to them. The first one that we always look at is, is there fault? Was the person that caused the injury truly at fault? If there isn't any question about that, a great example of that being rear-end collisions. If the client or claimant has been sitting at a stop sign minding their own business and they are struck from behind, there is no doubt about the fault. At that point we can tell the client that they are legally entitled and will very likely recover those damages that are a result of that collision. That sounds simple but sometimes you have folks that already have some injuries or have prior injuries that impact the treatment they get, could arguably be attributed to a prior injury or could arguably be attributed to the automobile accident and that's where our advocacy comes in. That's where making some determination of what that case is worth becomes more difficult. But in those circumstances the foundational evidence we turn to to help answer those questions are the experts in the field and those are the doctors. What the doctor says, has everything to do with whether or not a claimant is going to be able to be compensated for a particular injury. Likewise that is why insurance companies hire doctors, which are allowed under the rules of the court, to examine the claimant if the case goes that far and it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that the doctors hired by those insurance companies don't seem to see the level of injury or the causation of that injury in the same way that a treating physician does. They are used to minimize the value of the settlement or the value of the verdict.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• injury case
• accident law