3 Reasons Why You Think Your Injury Case is Worth More Than It Really Is

(1)  A lawyer told you that your case is worth “millions.”

This can happen when you first walk into an attorney’s office and they want to impress upon you that you have a great case and that they can, of course, handle your matter. Any personal injury or medical malpractice attorney who tells you that your case is worth millions on the first visit you meet them is telling you something that no lawyer could ever do.

If they tell you that, ask them to put it in writing. They won’t.

(2) You think your injuries are more significant than your neighbor’s injuries and she got tons of money in a lawsuit settlement.

Let’s get it on the table right now. Your injuries are different than your neighbor’s injuries. They affected you differently. They impacted your life differently than your neighbor. You are a different age than your neighbor. Your injury didn’t cause you to lose time from work. It did from your neighbor. Your injury didn’t require corrective surgery. It did for your neighbor. Your injury didn’t result in a long-term disability. It did for your neighbor.

Your injury didn’t require you to need medications and regular follow-up visits with various medical specialists. Your neighbor’s injuries did.

Even though you may have suffered a “similar” injury, I guarantee that your neighbor’s injuries and how it has affected his daily activities are different than yours. It’s that simple.

(3) You have unrealistic expectations about the value of your lawsuit.

There are some litigants who think that because someone was careless and caused injury, they are automatically ENTITLED to a large amount of money. That feeling of entitlement is prevalent through our society and not just in New York.

However, when you experience injuries because someone was negligent and careless, our laws require that you be compensated for the harm you have suffered. That’s known as “damages.”

What exactly are your “damages?”

In New York, there are two types of damages:
Economic damages and
Non-economic damages.

Economic damages are typically specific amounts and include these issues:
Did you lose time from work?
How much income did you lose?
Will your injuries prevent you from working in the future?
Did you have to pay medical bills for your care and treatment?
Did your health insurance pay for your medicals?
Did you lose job opportunities or advancement because of your injuries?
Non-economic damages include:
Past pain & suffering and future pain and suffering.

The term “pain and suffering” is often used and even more often misunderstood. It represents a single component of the agony and living with a debilitating and significant injury. When you explain to a friend how much pain you’re in, nobody really wants to hear you complain about how agonizing your recovery is. They don’t want to listen to a whiner.
 
Many injured victims keep their suffering inside to limit the harsh feedback from friends and family members. Pain can be insufferable and require medication to combat. Physical disability affects everything we do. There is a saying that pain is “Life’s window into hell.” If true, then it’s easy to understand why the pain and suffering awards made to injured victims represent the larges component of any award.

There are other types of awards, like that of a spouse seeking the loss of services of an injured spouse and an award in a wrongful death case where a child is seeking compensation for loss of a parent.

CONCLUSION

The only way to truly know the value of your case is for your attorney to fully evaluate your case after a thorough investigation. Even then, the true value of your case may not be known since you may be in the middle of getting medical treatment. Only when you know the full extent of your disabilities and how this injury affects you on a daily basis can your lawyer make an educated observation about the value of your case.

To learn more about how accident or medical malpractice cases work in New York I encourage you to explore my popular website http://www.oginski-law.com. If you have questions about a particular case, I want you to pick up the phone and call me. I can answer your legal questions; that’s what I do for a living. You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I welcome your call.