With over 15 years of experience practicing personal injury law in Florida under his belt, Jason Deitch knows the ins and outs of negotiating for the optimal settlement in a pain and suffering case. In September 2009, he launched I-Need-a-Personal-Injury-Lawyer.com to aid clients in finding the most experienced and qualified Florida personal injury lawyers.
It is up to the attorney in a pain and suffering case that goes to trial to ask the jury to award a certain amount of money. We, of course, always hope the jury awards that amount or as close to that amount as possible. Rarely does the plaintiff receive more money than the lawyer has asked for.
It is better for the attorney to somewhat highball the amount when asking the jury for an award because that puts an amount to start working with in the jurors’ minds. But there is a fine line there. As a lawyer, you don’t want to make yourself look greedy by asking for too much. If I ask for $100,000 in a simple whiplash case or $10 million in a broken leg case, I know there is no chance whatsoever a jury will ever award that kind of money. And if I’m asking for that much, I probably don’t know what I’m doing as a lawyer.
When I’m negotiating a settlement with an insurance adjuster, the tactic I use most often is showing past jury verdicts of similar cases to argue that a case is worth a certain amount of money. When a case is settled with an insurance adjuster, rather than going to trial, the attorney typically sends the insurance adjuster a “demand package.”
Some lawyers like to put together 20-page books with everything the adjuster needs to know about the case, from A to Z. But most adjusters have told me these are a waste of time because they don’t even read them. This is because when insurance adjusters decide how much to award in a settlement, they consider the following three factors, in order of importance: the lawyer in the case, the doctor in the case, the client’s injuries. Reputation matters most. Insurance adjusters know who the good doctors and lawyers are.
When a settlement is awarded in a pain and suffering case, the attorney takes a percentage of the gross settlement as his pay. Ninety-nine percent of bodily injury cases these days are done on a contingency fee basis, which means the lawyer does not charge any fees upfront. This gives people access to the court system who otherwise would not have it. If the client loses the case and does not receive a settlement, his attorney makes no money.
In some cases, if a client wants to go to court with a case that would not normally be tried, a lawyer will agree to try the case if the client pays the expenses.
This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Neither publication of this article nor your receipt of this article create an attorney-client relationship.
