Articles Posted in Personal Injury Verdicts

This page is about head injuries and their settlement compensation in personal injury lawsuits.

Our lawyers see a lot of head injuries in our practice.  Head injuries to automobile occupants have been shown to be a major cause of death and permanent brain injury. We see head injuries that range from headaches that resolve quickly to brain damage that destroys a life.

When it comes to determining appropriate settlement payout, head injuries might be the hardest personal injury claim to evaluate. Head injuries are a common occurrence in personal injury cases and they are often difficult to assess.  The head is a complex part of the body with delicate and vital structures. The effects of an injury to these structures may be subtle, slow to appear, and difficult to diagnose. Head injuries can also affect a person’s posture, appearance, and sensory organs, which can have a significant emotional impact on the person suffering the injury.

The average premises liability verdict is $643,099, according to Jury Verdict Research’s review of premises lawsuits around the country. The median verdict in these cases is $98,160. Claims against recreational facilities were higher. The average verdict is $1,007,704 and the median verdict is $125,000. JVR defines these cases as a lawsuit that is brought against an individual, business, landlord, or organization responsible for the maintenance and safety of a property or structure.

Average v. Median Verdicts

When possible, I try to include the average and median data. Average verdict data includes large, often uncollectable verdicts that distort the reality. While both the silly case that never should have been filed and the $58,000,000 verdict don’t really apply to the valuation of your case, the former distorts the result more than the latter.

In the past, I have written on the settlement amount for fractured legs. Now, in a relentless, unyielding effort to cover the settlement and trial value of every bone in the human anatomy, let’s thin-slice broken legs a little thinner.

So we will look at femur fractures generally but drill down on settlement amounts in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.

The median verdict or settlement amount of a femur fracture case in the District of Columbia is $250,000.00; in Virginia, it has been $200,000.00. However, the median verdict or settlement in a femur fracture case in Maryland has been $75,000.00. The national average is $167,000.

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Our law firm has handled a lot of vertebrae fractures in car, motorcycle, and truck accident cases over the last 20 years.  A vertebrae fracture can be a serious, significant, and permanent injury to the musculoskeletal system. You wouldn’t wish this fracture on anyone.

What is the Average Value for Vision Loss Cases?

Metro Verdicts Monthly graph this month is the median verdict and settlement value of “vision loss” personal injury cases. Omitting defense verdicts, the average settlement/verdict in Washington D.C. is $500,000. What do you think the average is in Maryland? Somehow, I doubt you would guess anything in the neighborhood or even the zip code of $192,700. The difference between these two numbers is inexplicable. The average settlement/verdict in vision loss cases in Virginia is $450,000.

I suspect something is wrong with this analysis because I really don’t think Virginia juries value vision loss twice as much as Maryland juries. I’d pay extra if they would include in an appendix the data they used for these graphs.

Disc Injury Values

JVR has done a national analysis of jury awards for spinal nerve with disc damage.

The study underscores what every plaintiffs’ lawyer has figured out by osmosis, if nothing else: age matters. Young people recover much better than older people.

The overall median award to plaintiffs age 18 and under was $43,997, while the median award to plaintiffs between the ages of 19 and 29 was $67,612. Plaintiffs between the ages of 40 and 59 who suffered spinal nerve with disc damage received a median award of $103,723, and plaintiffs age 60 and older received a median award of $100,000.

The interesting thing about the age numbers is that at some point, you see they turn again as juries increasingly blame age for the injuries. I bet if you took this up to 70 and 80, you would see the numbers continue to drop.

Anyway, these are the numbers:

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Metro Verdicts Monthly’s graph this month is non-fatal settlements and verdicts in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia in premises liability cases since 1987.

The median non-fatal premises liability case in Maryland was $69,000. The recoveries in Virginia and the District of Columbia are slightly less, $50,000 and $65,000, respectively.

If you look at the national data, you see an enormous difference between Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia and the rest of the country.  What is the common thread?  Contributory negligence is still the law in all three jurisdictions.

As I have said before, I love seeing these different verdicts in Maryland each month. It is always interesting to see different lawyers that you know and see what cases they had and how they fared. What diminishes the value of Metro Verdicts, in my mind, is the turnaround time. I have a case in this month’s edition that I tried 6 months ago. It does not diminish the quality of the information, but in the Internet era, it is not as enjoyable to read stale news.

• Premises liability case value: national verdict statistics (keep in mind that, unlike the figures above, these do not include settlements)
• Verdict statistics and settlement value of slip and fall cases in Maryland and nationally

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Value of Shoulder Separation Cases

Some time ago Metro Verdicts had a graph comparing settlement amounts in different regions or distinct types of injuries. This month, they had a fascinating graph comparing fractured shoulder injury verdicts and settlements in Maryland and Virginia since 1987, omitting defense verdicts. The average fractured shoulder verdict or settlement in Maryland was $154,800, whereas, in Virginia, it was only $52,500.  

This is a remarkable disparity. If you have a choice over the venue – not common, but it happens – it would seem that a smart lawyer with a client with a shoulder injury would choose Maryland. In reality, it is probably more complicated than that and would depend on the injury, the client, and what county in Maryland would have an appropriate venue for the lawsuit. While I love verdict data, all of it is suspect and should be just a weapon in a lawyer’s arsenal trying to figure out the value of a tort case.

Back Injury Verdicts

Metro Verdicts Monthly graphs the median verdict and settlement value of back fracture cases over the last 23 years. The median settlement/verdict in Washington D.C. is $52,500. Maryland has a slightly lower median of $43,126. The median settlement/verdict in a back fracture lawsuit in Virginia is $125,000. These are back fracture cases where there is no paralysis. These statistics are not a bit dated but the numbers still track.

Most back factures come from some trauma, usually from a motor vehicle crash or falling. The reason the numbers may sound lower than you are might expect is because many back fractures are not as serious as the ominous-sounding “back fracture” would suggest. When I was in high school, I hurt my back swinging a baseball bat at baseball camp in Florida. A chiropractor worked on me for a while but I made no progress. I went to an orthopedic doctor and, low and behold, I had a fractured back. It ruined my baseball season, and I had to wear a back brace for eight weeks but I suffered no ill effects after removing the back brace. Continue reading

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Over the last 20 years, our car accident lawyers have handled many wrist fracture cases.  We have seen wrist fracture cases with very high, very low, and everything in between. Our firm has a history of maximizing the trial and settlement value of wrist injury lawsuits.