Last week I tried a personal injury/auto accident case to a Stark County jury. There's an important lesson from that trial that anyone injured in an accident case should know.
Long story short, my client was broadsided in a bad crash. She sustained 4 broken ribs, a fracture to her sacrum (which is actually part of the pelvis), and three herniated discs in her lumbar spine. Bad injuries, many of which no therapy could help--only time and immobility.
Despite being really banged up, she did not "milk" her claim and try to pad her losses and run up tons of medical bills. She made the choice to return to her supervisor's job 6 days after the crash, reasoning that since she was in a lot of pain no matter what she did, she might as well return to work.
Her next 6 months were chock full of incredible pain with breathing, sitting, standing, sleeping--essentially everything was affected by all of her fractures.
She gutted it out with 40 grueling visits to her chiropractor, family and orthopaedic doctor, and lots of physical therapy and massotherapy to heal her herniated discs. She never missed an appointment, and scheduled all of her medical visits around her work schedule, taking some 75 hours of personal time from work.
She got her life back in about 6 months, when her chiropractor testified that he anticipated initially it would take 8-10 months of rehab for her to get better. Basically, she did everything she could to MINIMIZE her losses. Her healthy lifestyle before the crash was important to her and she was determined to get back to it as soon as possible.
The insurance company for the negligent driver made an incredibly lousy offer before trial, making the decision to go to trial easy. They no doubt were relying on the fact that she healed rather quickly, so the case was no big deal.
The jury did not see it that way. They returned a verdict that substantially beat the insurance company's last offer. They did this not even knowing any information about the insurance company's last offer, since negotiations between the parties are inadmissible in Ohio and almost all other states.
Bottom line: the jury admired her fortitude and laser like focus to get better and get on with her life despite all of her injuries. They did not penalize her for healing in less time than the average person.
The reason for their fair verdict was simple in my opinion. Juries often come into a case skeptical of the person bringing a lawsuit and his or her attorney, and not without some surface level justification for their skepticism. After all, they hear stories of people trying to "cash in" from a personal injury lawsuit, read about the occasional goofball frivolous lawsuit, and get bombarded by offensive solicitations in their mailboxes after a minor fender bender.
The best antibiotic for this skepticism is an honest, hard working, determined client who is simply doing everything she can do to get better.
She made my job a lot easier, and it's proof that juries will often do the right thing when they recognize human decency and effort.
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