How Much Is My Personal Injury Case Worth?

[00:00:07.08] People always ask, how much is my case worth? [00:00:10.16] It's a really difficult thing to evaluate early on in the case. [00:00:14.22] In fact, if a lawyer tells you [00:00:17.04] that they guarantee they can get you X number of dollars, [00:00:20.00] or that your case is worth so much money on the first visit, [00:00:24.19] you should not only run, but run fast, [00:00:27.06] because it's impossible to determine immediately [00:00:30.08] how much the case is worth. [00:00:31.12] Case value, so to speak, [00:00:33.12] is dependent on how extensive your injuries are, [00:00:37.07] how high your medical bills are, [00:00:39.20] how much time you've missed from work, [00:00:42.08] what type of limitations you're going to have [00:00:45.01] that are going to be permanent after you've recovered from the accident. [00:00:49.01] It's really impossible to determine early on what the value of a case is. [00:00:53.00] After we've obtained all this information that I've talked about, [00:00:56.11] we can always give our client then [00:00:58.03] a good idea of what the range of a jury verdict would be. [00:01:02.03] That's often how we evaluate a case [00:01:04.11] is what do we think a jury would ultimately give at trial? [00:01:07.22] We can provide our clients with a range [00:01:09.14] so that they can make an informed decision about settlement of their case. [00:01:13.02] When a case goes to trial, [00:01:14.17] a jury is asked to award a person what's called damages. [00:01:18.14] Damages fall into two different categories. [00:01:21.11] The first category is what we call economic damages. [00:01:24.05] That's things I tell clients [00:01:25.17] that they have maybe a piece of paper attached to it [00:01:29.00] like a medical bill, [00:01:31.13] lost income, where someone has either a paycheck, [00:01:35.13] or they receive regular commissions, or they work overtime. [00:01:38.12] Economic damages also include [00:01:40.04] something that's called loss of household services. [00:01:43.21] Texas law recognizes a claim [00:01:46.09] and recognizes the fact that in every household, [00:01:48.23] there are certain things that one member of the family does [00:01:52.09] that another member of the family does not. [00:01:54.16] We can assign an economic a dollar value. [00:01:57.19] The other type of damages that a jury can award [00:02:01.01] is what are called non-economic damages. [00:02:04.08] Non-economic damages are things that don't necessarily have [00:02:07.15] a particular dollar value attached. [00:02:10.02] It's things like physical pain, mental anguish, also physical impairment. [00:02:16.11] That means you're not able to do things that you could do before, [00:02:20.10] whether it's usually things that are more leisurely in nature. [00:02:24.20] Another type of non-economic damages is disfigurement. [00:02:27.23] Maybe a person has really significant scarring after an accident. [00:02:32.11] Maybe they were involved in a bad burn incident, [00:02:35.16] or maybe they had to have a major surgery, and now they have scarring. [00:02:38.21] Texas law recognizes a claim for the body being disfigured. [00:02:43.06] Another thing that juries can award as non-economic damages [00:02:47.12] is something that's called loss of consortium. [00:02:49.10] It's a difficult thing for juries to evaluate. [00:02:51.17] It's the loss of relationship. [00:02:54.18] We see it especially in parent-child, or husband-wife relationships. [00:02:59.14] It's not like a husband or a wife loves their spouse less after an accident, [00:03:05.00] but a relationship can be seriously damaged after an accident. [00:03:09.06] It's harder to be as participatory in a relationship, [00:03:15.01] whether that's just in doing things that you like to do, [00:03:17.23] or in fact, it can include, [00:03:20.00] and the jury can award for the loss of sexual relationship [00:03:24.08] and for consolation that one party can provide to the other; [00:03:29.18] advice, counsel. [00:03:31.17] Those things that you have in a relationship [00:03:33.15] that if someone's seriously injured [00:03:35.11] and they're not able to be the person that they were before, [00:03:39.05] the law recognizes a claim for that. [00:03:42.07] We try to recover all those types of damages for our clients.