Articles Posted in Personal Injury Awards

According to a Jury Verdict Research study released this month, the average jury award for finger and hand injuries is $629,382. This data for fractures, crush injuries, and nerve damage to fingers and hands is based on a review of jury verdicts in the United States over the last 10 years.

This average finger and hand injury verdict is a bit misleading because the data included a $20,000,000 verdict and other verdicts which completely distort the average verdict.

What does give more context?  Median verdict data.  The median verdict for hand and finger lawsuit verdicts, which, by definition, eliminates both high verdicts and the low verdicts, was $73,250. About a third of these injuries occurred in car, truck, and motorcycle accidents.

The average verdict in chest and breast injury cases is $279,188, according to a Jury Verdict Research study over the last 10 years. Almost half of these cases were medical malpractice cases (41%) but the bulk of the remaining cases involve auto, truck, and motorcycle accidents. Approximately 43% of the accident cases involve either a turning vehicle or an intersection collision.

The following are examples of recent chest and breast injury cases. Each of these cases can give you an idea of how much a potential case may settle for:

• 2020, Michigan: $490,000 Settlement. A 78-year-old former sailor suffered multiple rib fractures, and a collapsed lung after a sailboat collided with his sailboat during a regatta. He underwent emergency surgery to his collapsed lung. Doctors also surgically shortened his ribs and implanted a plate to stabilize the fractures. The case settled for $490,000.

Paralysis is one of the worst injures our Maryland car accident attorneys handle.  A recent Jury Verdict Research report confirms what you would to find about personal injury verdicts for paralysis: younger plaintiffs receive higher verdicts and settlements. Plaintiffs 17-years-old and under receive a median verdict in personal injury cases of $15,500,000.

Plaintiffs 50 years-old and older receive $3,358,428. The average paralysis verdict is $13,854,992; the median paralysis verdict is $6,935,774. Approximately 65% of paralysis patients come from motor vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, or product liability cases.

Are these big numbers?  They are.  But, really, it is never “fair” compensation in these cases.  No paralyzed client ever puts money in their pocket from a settlement or verdict and feels like justice has been done.  Because there is no amount of money that can make things right.  You just hope to get enough compensation to make your life and the lives of the people you love a bit easier.  

In car accident cases, there are typically relatively “good” settlements on ankle injury cases. For our purposes here, “good” is defined as the probability of getting a reasonable settlement offer before suing.

Why are ankle injury cases easier to settle than other accident claims? But the most obvious explanation is the nature of ankle injuries. With neck and back injuries, which are common car accident injuries, people with the exact same radiological findings can have very different manifestations of pain. Given this, insurance companies tend to assume the lowest level of pain in these types of cases.

In contrast, ankle injuries are far less often the result of degenerative changes and are usually caused by trauma, rarely leading to concerns about preexisting injuries or arthritic changes. Just as importantly, they are typically objective injuries we can see in a radiology report. It also helps in reaching a value of an ankle injury for settlement purposes that the treatment of ankle injuries is generally not as involved as other car accident injuries which decreases the extent of the “you should not have gotten so much treatment” arguments from the insurance company.

Jury Verdict Research reports on a study it conducted that found that in the last ten years, the overall median compensatory award for soft tissue knee injuries, strains, and cartilage and ligament damage is $40,972. The average trial value of knee injury cases involving knee lacerations, contusions, and inflammation is $57,884 ($8,952 median). The average verdict for a knee strain case is $70,055 ($10,412 median). The average verdict for a chondromalacia knee injury (abnormal softening of the knee cartilage on the underside of the patella) is $215,434 (median is $45,000). I think these numbers are a bit low, but they are of interest to lawyers trying to determine how much is the settlement value of their knee injury case.

• A deeper dive into the settlement value of knee injuries

 Knee Injury Settlements and Verdicts

The Western District Missouri Court of Appeals last week affirmed a $ 950,000 jury verdict in a motorcycle accident case, concluding that the condition of the road during construction was the primary cause of the man’s injuries.

The jury award surprises me. Plaintiff was driving his motorcycle through an “inactive” construction zone. While passing a truck at 70 miles per hour, he lost control of his motorcycle as the result of uneven payment, a nearly two-inch difference in the grades. (Arguably that 70 mph did not help, either.)

Plaintiff’s lawsuit alleged the motorcycle accident would not have occurred if there had been proper warning of the uneven surfaces. The jury largely agreed, finding the defendants 95% at fault for the accident and the motorcyclist only 5% at fault (which would lead to a defense verdict under Maryland law). http://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=51217

A California jury has awarded a $1.1 million verdict to a man who sued his landlord after a slip and fall. Plaintiff fell down the stairs at his apartment on January 1, 2010, and later developed disk injury and symptoms of lumbar strain. A houseman for a wealthy San Francisco family, Plaintiff was forced to quit his job because of the pain. Torres sued the property owner alleging that he failed to keep the stairs clear of slippery algae, and did not install a handrail, as required by local code. The owner or his insurance company let the case to trial. Bad choice. A jury awarded Torres $1,070,801 for economic losses, including $850,000 for future lost earnings. Plaintiff’s slip and fall attorney said, “If the defendant had provided the minimum protection of a building code-required handrail, at a cost of less than $100 and an hour of time, this lawsuit would have never been necessary….” This really makes you step back and think. As a retired general contractor, Fleming could have installed the handrail himself. What made him think it was worth the risk NOT to install the handrail? Plaintiff and his family had moved to the apartment in 2008 after losing his Novato home to foreclosure. Hopefully, with a million-dollar verdict, he’ll be able to find another home. Maryland slip and fall cases are now getting a bit easier to get to a jury after a recent Maryland Court of Appeals opinion that softens Maryland’s still somewhat Draconian assumption of the risk law.

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A critical component of damages in wrongful death car accident cases is loss of services of the survivors from the victim. Loss of services is a dumb legal expression we would do best to get rid of. Solatium damages is an awful phrase, too. But at least it does not imply in the definition that the loss is pretty much someone doing less for you. (Noneconomic pain and suffering damages is a little better, I guess. We will use that.)

In Maryland, we describe these wrongful death damages to a jury as “mental anguish, emotional pain and suffering, loss of society, companionship, comfort, protection, marital care, parental care, filial care, attention, advice, counsel, training, guidance, or education where applicable.” Most states use similar strange language, but the gist of it is: what has really been lost – calculating everything – from the death of this person?

Here are the statistics nationally on noneconomic pain and suffering jury awards:

Jury Verdict Research did a study that found that the average money damages verdict in a car/truck accident case brought by the passenger is $486,098. It sounds like a lot, but high (and maybe uncollectable) verdicts distort the average. The median passenger verdict is $30,000. Here is where it gets interesting. I think it is difficult to lose a passenger accident case. Certainly, the passenger is not responsible for the accident (ignoring for a second the “I knew he was drunk out of his mind and I got in the car with him anyway” passenger). Yet plaintiffs only receive money damages in 62 percent of passenger cases that go to verdict. I just can’t make sense of the numbers. Here is how it breaks out: Host Driver’s Negligence: 58% Both Drivers’ Negligence: 64% Driver & Business Negligence: 73% Driver & Government Negligence: 74% Passenger Suits Generally: 62%

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