What makes a good personal injury case? By “good” personal injury case, I mean a strong personal injury case worth money.
A personal injury case is a case where someone’s carelessness caused your injury.
1. Bad Injuries Diagnosed Quickly
The first thing that makes a good personal injury case is a bad injury. The worse the injury, the better the case.
Examples of some bad injuries are those that result in you having surgery, an amputation, a brain injury, a significant brain injury, fractures, tears, things like that.
A bad injury increases drives up the full value of the case.
When you hear these huge awards on the news and internet, in every one of those cases, you will note one common theme. The injury was terrible.
Sometimes, in the comments section of some videos or articles that result in large verdicts or settlements, people say that the system is unfair.
Some commenters even go so far as to say that they wish that they were the person hurt in the accident. I can guarantee that in any case that results in a huge verdict or settlement, you do not want to be the injured person.
A big settlement or verdict means that the victim was hurt very badly. Often times, you won’t be able to tell how badly the victim was hurt just from reading the title of the article, or even reading the entire article.
2. Injuries 100% Related to Accident
The second thing that makes a good personal injury case is if you are clearly related to the accident.
The more difficult time that you have proving that your injuries were caused by the accident, the tougher your case is.
The easier it is for a doctor to link up your injury to the accident, the higher the full value of a case. Fractures, stitches and scarring are typically easy to link up to an accident.
Injuries that can be tougher to link to an accident are knee pain, neck pain, back pain, maybe a herniated disc, a bulging disc, and injuries of that nature.
3. 100% Fault on Other Party
The third thing that makes a good personal injury case is if someone else was careless. If the other party wasn’t at fault, your case is worth zero.
Sometimes, I’ll get calls from people who slip and fall, trip and fall, or are otherwise hurt at a business premises. They ask, “How much money can I get?”
My reply is, “What did the business do wrong?”
The same applies in a car accident too. What did the other driver do wrong?
4. 0% Fault on You
The fourth thing that makes a good personal injury case is if there’s zero fault on you, or as little fault as possible.
Your percentage of fault reduces the case value. If you are 90% at fault in an accident, in Florida, then you’re entitled to recover 10% of the full value of your case.
If you’re 50% at fault in Florida, you’re entitled to recover 50% of the value of your case. So as your fault increases, the case value decreases.
If you have zero fault, the full value of the case remains higher. If you’re 90% fault, the full value of the case gets reduced.
Examples of cases where you may have a large percentage of fault, are a slip and fall, trip and fall. In these cases, the store or business often argues you should have seen what you claimed that you tripped or slipped on.
They argue that if what you tripped on was so harmful or dangerous and the business should have seen it, then “Why didn’t you see it?”
Cases where there is generally a lot less fault on you are rear end accidents. This is true unless the other driver alleges that you slammed on the brakes or did something wrong.
Your fault has a huge impact on the value of the case.
I’ve had a client ask, “Why am I only getting offered this amount of money? I see on your website that another client received a much larger amount of money?”
At that time, if appropriate, I’ll discuss my client’s fault. Sometimes my client’s personal injury case arises from a trip and fall, or slip and falls.
In those cases, the injured person’s fault may drop the value of a case by, sometimes, 50%, 60%, 70%.
Believe me, I wish we’d be entitled to get 100% of the full value of every case. But, but your percentage of fault is something that you need to consider if you want to have the best chances at settling your case for fair value with the insurance company.
Insurance adjusters evaluate these cases all the time. They know how to evaluate your percentage of fault.
However, just because they tell you that you’re a certain percentage at fault, don’t take what they tell you at face value.
They may be wrong. Their opinion of your fault, may be different than yours.
You need to look at the case fairly to determine your percentage of fault. Sometimes it’s tough to do if you’re the party that’s injured.
This is because you’re emotionally connected to the case. You may think that you weren’t at fault. Some people who trip and fall, or slip and fall, think that they’ve done nothing wrong.
Your evaluation needs to be based on how your “average Joe” would look at your fault.
5. Enough Insurance to Pay Settlement Value
The 5th thing that makes a good personal injury case is there being enough insurance or money to pay for your injuries. The first four factors that I went over are essentially useless if there’s no money to pay for your injuries.
If you win your case at trial, you get a judgment. It’s a sheet of paper that gets filed with the court.
If there’s no one to pay that judgment, you’re not going to get money. The court doesn’t pay you. The person or business that caused your accident pays you.
In Florida, billions of dollars are left on the table because there is no insurance. This is particularly true in car accidents.
In Florida, there’s no requirement to have bodily injury liability insurance on most cars. Most car owners in Florida don’t have uninsured motorist (“UM”) insurance.
UM insurance pays you if someone else caused your accident, and they don’t have enough insurance or any insurance. You make a claim against your UM insurer.
In many car accidents, the injured person doesn’t get paid for the fair value of his/her case because there’s not enough insurance.
The good news is for most slip and falls and trip and falls at businesses, businesses likely to have plenty of insurance.