These are just some personal settlement/award anecdotes in addition to the technical and procedural stuff that
Hatorade
gave/can continue giving you. Firsthand stuff, with normal real-life people that I've known personally, as the years go by.
- Guy gets rear-ended on a jammed offramp, vehicle enters Guy's trunk space. Guy's neck is strained badly but not broken.
- Guy thinks he won the lottery. Guy uses PIP. Guy hires his own lawyer.
- Guy is advised that they are low-balling, and if he isn't willing to agree to neck surgery he can't help him any further. Says surgery is potential lotto dough if he can sell it to a jury.
- Guy vetos surgery. Guy takes 20k check. Guy's neck hurts persistently. Guy rubs it frequently in public decades later.
Lesson: Raw deal.
- Girl gets hit head-on. Girl's face is lacerated between 1 inch and 1.5 inches on her cheek right below her eye.
- Girl hires lawyer. Lawyer informs her a young girl in her prime dating years with a scar to the face has to go to a jury to receive a proper settlement.
- Girl settles before deliberations could occur on receipt of a 250,000 dollar offer.
Lesson: Girl could have seen a million-dollar payout. Girl chose not to play Vegas odds with a 250k check on the table.
- Girl is struck in her SUV by a company vehicle, with her young firstborn daughter in the back seat.
- Driver's jaw is screwed up bad, needs surgery and then is wired shut. Face busted pretty good. Intense pain.
- Girl hires lawyer. Files suit against company, driver, and relevant insurance.
- Girl has strong case, refuses many settlement offers between 50k and 150k.
- Defendant insurance mounts an offensive to make sure she doesn't get a cent for taking it to court.
- Girl is dragged through the mud at trial. Called a bad mom, pain pill addict (that she received as a result of the accident), and a disabled loser seeking a lotto payout.
- Girl is a stay-at-home mom with 2 young daughters. Insurance lawyers attack that, insisting she is a loser, and addicted to her legally prescribed opioids she takes for her jaw.
- Defendants introduce prescription records and doctor visit records in support of their slander. The attacks become vicious, the language is extremely harsh.
- Defendants attack her relationship to her doctor. Saying he is a family friend, and that he is part of this drug problem that is causing her to sue insurance for a condition that doesn't exist because a car accident couldn't have done this.
- The defendants switch angles, making an argument that a jaw-aligning TMJ preventative surgery she had as a teenager is responsible for all her pain (after attacking her about taking pain meds and raising her two daughters, in the next breath they agree that she might have legitimate pain, buts its totally NOT from this face-destroying accident she had when she began taking pain medication for the injury 15 years later)
- Girl breaks down crying many times traumatized by the evisceration of her life which is being dragged out for month(s). Her husband is barely able to contain himself on the stand.
- Girl receives a jury award of 1.2 million after a few years of settlement offers and a lengthy trial. 900k pain and suffering portion paid immediately.
Lesson: Some of these insurance companies go hard. They aren't going to just hand it over, regardless of your injuries or validity of your claim.
