Personal Injury Lawyers

Ed Van Dorn

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Placing a value on a personal injury case involves a number of factors, many of which cannot be known at the beginning of the case. Any lawyer taking a personal injury case should be prepared to try that case to a jury if the insurance company is not willing to pay a fair and just settlement.

Many lawyers belong to listserves. These are groups that share emails about legal topics of interest. The other day I saw a message from a lawyer about a personal injury case. It was clear the lawyer wasn't familiar with this area of the law. He wanted to know how to tell his client the value of a case. I am firmly of the belief that any lawyer handling a personal injury case should have experience in personal injury law including the trial of personal injury cases to juries or they should enlist the help of a personal injury lawyer experienced in trying these cases to a jury. Otherwise they cannot expect to get a fair and just settlement for their client.

I am reprinting below my response on the listserve where the original question was asked. The attorney "Rob" I refer to posted an email saying you can't advise a client how much the case is worth at the beginning of the case, because you don't have enough information. I agreed with that statement.

I basically tell clients the same thing as Rob. I then tell them that after they reach a medical endpoint or a doctor is otherwise in a position to determine permanency and we know what all the losses are, we (I and the client) will come up with a fair settlement value. I then tell them that if the insurance company is not willing to pay what we, not they, decide is fair we will take the case to court and try it in front of a jury. This may also cause a stir, but I think that any attorney not willing to do this should not take the case, and not call themselves personal injury lawyers. The argument that it is not profitable to the attorney to try these cases holds no water.

As far as the multiple of specials evaluation goes, it is a myth. Here in NH we've had cases where the jury has returned verdicts for ten and twenty times specials, even in soft tissue cases. My partner Rob Curtiss had a dog bite verdict in upstate NY (Warren County) where the jury returned a verdict over 300 times specials. I tried a case in Augusta Maine where the jury returned a verdict in excess of 100 times specials, another in NH with over 600 times specials. I strongly advise against letting the insurance company back you into negotiating cases based on a multiple of specials unless it is in your client's interest to do so. In smaller cases with no permanant injury sometimes its can be in your client's interest to argue the settlement on the multiple of specials model, especially when a lot of the specials were for diagnositic treatment. However with sophisticated adjustors you will find that those are the cases where they don't want to use the multiple of specials model to establish settlement value. Ed Van Dorn

Before you hire a lawyer for a serious personal injury claim, make sure that lawyer has a track record for successfully trying personal injury cases to juries. My firm has published a list of questions to ask any lawyer you are thinking of hiring for your personal injury case. Contact us to get a free copy of the list.