The Dirty Secret of Personal Injury Law
Whether it’s fair or not, the amount of damage done to your vehicle has a LOT to do with the value of your personal injury claim.
I’ll be the first to say that, categorically, there is no 1:1 correlation between the damage done to a vehicle and the physical damage sustained by the occupant. Every health care provider that I have ever deposed, or even spoken to off the record, has told me that the property damage does not necessarily predict the injuries to the occupant (there are, of course, some insurance company prostitutes out there, but we’re not talking about them).
It’s really just physics. Cars are made from different substances than people, so they take impacts differently. The best analogy is that of the egg carton: Your egg carton in the store might look totally fine, but all of your eggs could be cracked. Same with cars…a car might look fine after an accident, but the occupant might be seriously injured.
The problem is that we’re talking science. We’re talking logic. And as we have seen particularly with regard to our most recent presidential election, things like logic and science don’t necessarily hold sway with everyone.
Over the years insurance companies have seen a lot of traction with the argument, “If the car ain’t hurt then the person in the car can’t be hurt!” Conservative/uneducated/bitter jurors are easily swayed by this argument. It is not based in science, and virtually every health care provider will argue against it. But that doesn’t matter. Sadly, there is a large contingent of our population that simply doesn’t care about the science or the logic behind the argument. They are driven by different motivations. They see people who file suit after auto accidents as taking advantage of the system or trying to profit from an accident. They have fallen prey to the conservative attacks in the media that argue for “tort reform” despite the fact that things like medical malpractice verdicts are virtually non-existent these days, particularly in NC. All they want to do is tell the plaintiff “No” and they will hang their hat on ANY argument, even if it’s not backed up by science (see also climate change skeptics, as these are generally the exact same people).
This is what we’re up against. The strength of your case in many ways can be totally compromised by this backwards, cynical, uninformed mindset. Unless and until we can guarantee that we won’t have these sort of people on juries we can’t avoid taking your property damage into account when providing a realistic evaluation of your case. It’s just the way it is now.
If you have an accident, call me and I hope to help: 919-929-2992.
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