How to Settle Your Own Personal Injury Case

Today, we're going to talk about what is the formula for settlement in a personal injury case? We will get calls from folks who are trying to settle their case on their own or they want to know what is our own methodology for recommending a settlement range and so they will say things to us like, "I heard that you take the medical bills, you add them up and then you multiply by three or by two or by four, what is the formula?" Well, this comes as no surprise to you, but there really is no formula for settling personal injury claims.

Why is that?

Well, personal injury claims, when they go to trial are determined by juries. Juries decide how much money the plaintiff will be awarded and they're not given any formula book. Instead, they're given evidence and a list of items of damage that they may consider and then they arrive in their own mind what your case is worth.

So what that tells us is that while there is no formula for settlement in a personal injury case, there is definitely a methodology, a way of looking at cases that are engaged in both by the insurance company who is making the offer and by the personal injury attorney who is making the recommendation for settlement.

So let's talk a little bit about that. Ultimately, the question that both the insurance company and your lawyer are doing is answering the question, what would a jury do with your case? And in order to answer that, at least from the insurance company's perspective, what they're doing is keeping track of thousands and tens of thousands of cases a year across the country and for each case that they settle or each case that goes to a jury, the jury awards an amount of money.

they have all sorts of data including what are the injuries being claimed, what are the medical bills that certainly is a part of the data although not a part of the formula, is there any scarring, what do the person do for a living, how much time do they miss off of work, do they have any permanent disability and they take all of those numbers and put them into their database and then they can extract from that database knowledge and information about what juries in the same or similar circumstance in your location, in your particular city or town have done with that and they also know how successful they have been in settling cases with same or similar type injuries and the same or similar type picture of the overall case, how successful they have been in settling those cases in your area.

So that teaches us a couple of things. First, only your state matters or really let's say your city, town matters. What that means is that you may have a case in Virginia, but you hear about somebody in California or in New York who received a certain amount of money for a broken ankle and you say, well, how come my case isn't worth that? What we're looking at is what, in our situation, what Northern Virginia juries have done in the past cases involving a broken ankle. That is the market place, so the jury is the marketplace.

We also know that the insurance companies have really the most information about this, why? Because they are the one settling more cases than any lawyers possibly could. It doesn't mean they're right all the time, but it means it has a statistical matter. They're going to have the most information about what has gone on in the past.

Let's talk about some of the intangibles that go into an evaluation of the case and there really are two big ones from the insurance company's standpoint and you want to know who is your doctor and who is your lawyer? Now, I told you that the insurance companies keep track of everything so they have these big databases and they know for example which doctors are the overtreaters and does their bills are sort of susceptible to challenge at trial in front of a jury.

They know which doctors make bad witnesses. They also know of course which doctors make good witnesses and here's something you might not have thought of, but there are a lot of lawyers that make referrals of clients to doctors. So you may go into a lawyer's office, he's got a stack of chiropractic cards or orthopedic cards. This is something that you'll never know unless you go to trial, but it can be really be the cause of death to your case.

Because if your lawyer is one who refers lots and lots of claimants to the same doctor, I can guarantee you that on cross examination at trial, that is going to look bad. So a doctor saying you have a certain injury and he's had to treat you for X number of dollars and it comes out in the middle of trial that well he gets 10 patients a month from your lawyer, the argument is going to be made that that doctor is shading his testimony to favor your lawyer. So you need to ask that question of your lawyer if you are getting a referral to a doctor, but you need to know how many times has that lawyer referred to that doctor, how many patients a year, a month because it can be vital to your case.

The second thing the insurance company is going to want to know is who is your lawyer because they keep track of these couple of things. They know which lawyer settle everything. That's important because they know that some lawyers will never go to trial and so they can be convinced to take a lower amount of money for your case. They keep track of this stuff. The other thing they know is, is your lawyer is a specialist. That's important again because the insurance company is making an evaluation of how likely it is your lawyer will do a great job if you have to go to trial. Remember that while most of these cases settle, a certain percentage will go to trial every year and you're going to want to go to trial with someone who is an experienced specialist. Not someone who is a general practitioner who dabbles in personal injury claims, not someone who is doing a divorce one week and a personal injury trial the next. You're going to want to go with the specialist in order to have the best chance.

The insurance company is keeping track of that and it goes into their calculus when they are making you settlement offers.

So let's talk about what goes into your lawyer's evaluation. Typically a lawyer will the good one's anyway are not going to be able to tell you what your case is worth until you have finished your treatment. They've received all the doctor reports, the medical bills, information from your employer. They perhaps have spoken to your doctor about the nature and extent of your injury and then your lawyer is going to make you a settlement evaluation will come to you in writing before any demand is made on the insurance company. In fact, you should ask for it in writing.

What your lawyer is doing is very similar to what the insurance company is doing is that here she is saying to himself what would a jury do. The lawyer is often an experienced personal injury lawyer who is often in a very great position to be able to tell you, look, in my city or town or in other cities or towns where I've tried a lot of cases, I think your case is worth between X and Y.

Some of the other things that a personal injury lawyers do is they of course subscribe to publications that report jury verdicts, that report settlements. They talk to their colleagues at lawyer meetings, things like that. Again, what this all says for you, the consumer is that you want a lawyer if he's going to represent you in a personal injury claim, you want a lawyer who is in the game, who is sort of in the thick of it in terms of seeing being exposed to a lot of personal injury trials and settlements so that, here she can give you a fairly accurate range of settlement for your case.

Now, at the end of the day, nothing is perfect. At the end of the day, when you go to trial and the case is submitted to the jury, ultimately, all of this is up to the jury as I said in the beginning of this legal academy lesson, the jury has no formula. The jury will hear and see the evidence, listen to the arguments of the lawyers. They'll evaluate you in your injury listening to the testimony of your doctors and ultimately, they're given a set of jury instructions from the judge that tells them how to go about deciding the case, what the rules of the law are, what the elements of the damages are, but ultimately, at the end of the day, remember, no formula for the jury.

For more information on how you could possibly settle your own case, click on this link for access to a free sample chapter of The Five Deadly Sins That Can Wreck Your Injury Claim.

If you have a question for Ben, you can submit it confidentially online at JustAskBenGlass.com.

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