Articles Posted in Personal Injury Verdicts

What Is an Open Reduction Internal Fixation Surgical Repair?

An open reduction, internal fixation surgical repair of foot fractures using plates and screws means that the bones and joints are put back into pre-injury position and stabilized. The hope is that repair position will hold for proper healing of the fractures and alignment of joints in anatomical alignment. (The circular fixation method is also an option that has been explored more by foot and ankle surgeons in recent years.

Would You Expect a Discreet Fracture to Have a High Settlement Value?

A discreet fracture can still cause great symptoms to the victim. But, generally, a discreet fracture will have a lower settlement value than other foot fracture cases.

What is the #1 Thing That Drives the Settlement Value of Foot Injury Cases?

The most important thing that drives the settlement value of foot injuries is whether the victim has permanent restrictions on high demand activities such as walking, running, or standing for long periods of time. If the injuries are permanent, the value shoots up dramatically in most cases.

Laundry List of Foot Injury Fracture Our Lawyers See

There are several different types of foot fractures that can occur from trauma, including:

1. Stress Fractures: These are small cracks in the bone that occur from repetitive stress or overuse. They can also occur from a sudden increase in physical activity. This is the injury we see the least in personal injury car accident claims becaus because there are few stress fractures in the foot from acute trauma. 
2. Avulsion Fractures: This occurs when a small piece of bone is pulled off due to the force of a ligament or tendon. You see this injury in high impact collisions and settlement amount tend to be high for this injury.  
3. Compression Fractures: This occurs when the bones in the foot are crushed, often as a result of a fall or impact.  Normally a foot fracture has a higher settlement payout when the victim is young.  But older people sometimes get higher compensation for a compression fracture because they heal so poorly compared to younger victims. 
4. Displaced Fractures: This occurs when the bone breaks and is no longer aligned correctly. This type of fracture often requires surgery to realign the bone.  Surgery always increase average settlement compensation. 
5. Non-Displaced Fractures: This is when the bone is broken, but remains aligned correctly. These types of fractures often heal with immobilization or casting.  Values are less for non-displaced fractures generally although we have seen cases where the long term consequence are more severe.  
6. Open Fractures: This is when the bone breaks through the skin, increasing the risk of infection. These types of fractures require immediate medical attention. High payouts on these cases in no small part because the pictures are usually awful looking. 
7. Closed Fractures: This is when the bone breaks but does not break through the skin. These types of fractures may require immobilization or surgery depending on the severity of the injury.

Our Law Firm Has Handles Scores of Foot Fracture Claims

Our lawyers at Miller & Zois handle a wide variety of food fracture claims. We have gotten big settlements and verdicts in these cases.  Call us today at 800-553-8082 or reach out to us online. 

Obviously, there are a lot of vexing injuries that occur in car and truck accidents. Foot and ankle injuries rank high on this list of hard to solve accident injuries. There are so many bones in the foot — one-fourth of all of your bones — and the bones are so small. Just too many things can go wrong.

What Is the Average Settlement Value of a Foot Injury Accident Claim?

According to a Jury Verdict Research study, the overall median jury award for foot injuries is approximately $100,000 (maybe slightly less in Maryland).  More serious foot injuries see a corresponding rise in value. Multiple fractures to a foot increase the median verdict to $144,000. In foot injury cases where both feet are fractured, the median rises to $296,940. For plaintiffs’ lawyers repeating the “scope property damage does not matter” credo, it is hard to ignore the conclusion that if you have suffered fractures to both of your feet, you were most likely in a serious accident. Another Jury Verdict Research study found that 39% of the foot injury cases that went to verdict were suffered in motor vehicle collisions. A remarkable 11% of serious foot injury cases were in motorcycle accident cases. This stat underscores how dangerous motorcycles are compared to cars or trucks.

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According to a recent Jury Verdict Research report, plaintiffs on motorcycles receive higher awards for collisions than bicycle plaintiffs. Makes sense. They are driving much faster and frequently roads where speed is more of an issue.

Their analysis, based on plaintiffs’ verdicts rendered from October 1999 to October 2006, examines motorcycle and bicycle categories involving collisions with other vehicles, objects, and pedestrians. The study found that the award median for motorcycle accidents was $73,700 compared to $40,912 for bicycle plaintiffs.

I assume they base the difference in the fact that motorcycles generate greater speeds that lead to more serious accidents. Interestingly, Jury Verdict Research provided average verdicts> with this data, which it rarely does. To underscore the difference between median and average, the average motorcycle accident case was $561,065 and the average bike accident case was $500,353.

On this page, I will look at the average settlement payout value for ankle injuries in accident cases.

I think I have a good handle on the settlement value of ankle fracture cases.  My law firm has handled many foot and ankle injury cases over the years.  My first foot and ankle case was 17 years ago when I sued the New England Patriots and their team doctors that ultimately settled. I probably met with a half dozen of the best foot and ankle surgeons in the country in connection with that case. Continue reading

This page will look at the average settlement payout in injury or accident cases involving herniated disc injuries in the cervical region of the spine.

Metro Verdicts Monthly’s graph in this month’s issue is median settlements and verdicts in cervical (neck) herniated disc cases in Maryland, Washington, D.C, and Virginia. The median cervical herniated disc case in Maryland is $40,000. The Washington D.C. and Virginia medians are $50,000 and $36,000, respectively.

Settlement Values Vary Wildly

What is the settlement value of a personal injury claim where you have lost your vision in either one eye or both?

Metro Verdicts Monthly has a graph that reflects the median verdicts and settlements when the injury victim loses vision in one eye in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

What Is the Average Settlement Compensation for Loss of Sight in One Eye?

The median for compensation for losing vision in one eye in Maryland is $231,000. You could drive a truck through the gap between Washington, D.C., and Virginia’s median settlements and verdicts with loss of vision in one eye cases: Washington, D.C.’s median is $162,500; Virginia’s is $320,000.

These numbers are a bit misleading.   I think because most loss of vision cases are product liability cases. Many product liability cases have questionable liability, decreasing the average and median eye injury settlement amounts. If liability is not an issue, the compensation payouts in loss of sight in one-eye cases are much higher.

What Kind of Money Can I Expect for an Eye Injury at Work?

Workers’ compensation laws work differently than claims against other third parties. So if the claim is against your employer, a different set of laws apply. You can typically expect less in an eye injury settlement in a workers’ comp case against your employer than you would for the same injury when a third party was responsible.

But in some cases, the victim has two claims: a workers’ comp claim and a claim against the party that caused the harm.

On this page, we will look at average verdicts and settlements in breast cancer malpractice cases.

Metro Verdicts Monthly’s cover graph is failure to diagnose breast cancer settlements and verdicts in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. By some estimates, between 8% and 12% of cancer cases are initially misdiagnosed.

It is hard to call one type of cancer misdiagnosis case more tragic than another. Every misdiagnosis is going to decrease the chance of treating and defeating the cancer.

But many cancer misdiagnosis cases are not medical malpractice cases because the cancer is so aggressive, but breast cancer misdiagnosis cases are fueled by tragedy because breast cancer is often extremely manageable when caught early, and often fatal when missed. Continue reading

Our lawyers have handled scores of lawsuits where the primary injury was head injuries and headaches.  This page is about projecting settlement amounts and jury payouts in head injury and headache lawsuits.

Juries Struggle to Place Compensation on Headaches

Juries struggle with figuring out how to value personal injury cases when the primary injury is a closed head injury that caused —  and may continue to cause — headaches.

Arthritis is such a severe injury because it is permanent. Our clients who suffer from arthritis do not get better over time. They get worse.

This page looks at the settlement compensation you can generally expect in personal injury claims where arthritis is a significant component of the victim’s injuries.

Personal Injury Claims Alleging Arthritis

Our lawyers have handled scores of car accident and product liability cases where the injury is an amputation or serious injury to the victim’s toe or toes.

This page is about the settlement compensation payouts in toe injury and amputation cases and the issues that are presented in these injury claims.  This page was last updated on February 22, 2023.

How much is a toe worth?

A recent Jury Verdict Research analysis of jury verdicts found that the overall median award for the amputation of one toe is $119,008. The median award for foot nerve damage or tarsal tunnel syndrome accident cases was $143,265. Underscoring the difficulties of the healing process in the complex structures that are our feet, the median award for foot injuries is $98,583.

Metro Verdicts Monthly came out today with a new statistic on the trial and settlement value (they are lumped together) of fractured hip cases. The median settlement values for fractured hip cases are:

Maryland: $160,000