In an injury case, the goal is often to settle the case at a fair value so you can get back to your life and get your damages covered quickly. Insurance companies’ settlement offers can be hard to understand, especially when they say that it is a final offer or that you will not be able to get more. It is important to work with a lawyer to see if the offer is good enough, and to determine what to do if it’s insufficient.
With whiplash, settlement offers should account for all of the medical needs for the injury, any lost wages from missed work, and the pain and suffering of the injury. Whiplash can be surprisingly serious, with many victims never fully recovering from the stiffness, pain, and discomfort. For this reason, you should always have a lawyer review your whiplash case to help you calculate a fair settlement value.
For a free case evaluation, call the NJ personal injury lawyers at Agrapidis & Maroules, P.C. at (201) 777-1111 today.
“Stereotypical” Injury Might Not Be Believed
Whiplash is often seen as a stereotypical car accident injury. Many people have the image in their mind of TV/movie lawyers and injury victims exaggerating whiplash injuries or wearing a neck brace they don’t need to try to get a bigger settlement.
This stereotype can make it hard for those who really do have serious whiplash injuries to get full damages for their injury, and it creates an uphill battle for our NJ car accident lawyers.
Is the Injury “Serious” Enough?
Aside from the stereotypes, whiplash is an injury that might or might not qualify for additional damages in a car accident case. In NJ, we have a “serious injury threshold” for car insurance: if your injury is not “serious,” then you cannot get pain and suffering damages.
Serious Injury Threshold
This standard, found in N.J.S.A. § 39:6A-8, allows pain and suffering claims when the injury causes “permanent injury” – which whiplash can qualify for. Without this or another qualifying injury (e.g., a displaced fracture), you would be limited to economic damages only.
Unlimited Right to Sue
If you have an unlimited right to sue policy, then this limitation is ignored entirely. You can sue for any injuries or damages, including pain and suffering, with one of these policies.
Outside of Car Accidents
Car accidents are the most common place whiplash injuries occur, so this rule is likely to apply to your case. However, if your injury was from a different type of accident, then the serious injury threshold will not apply. That rule is for car accident claims only.
Evidence of Severity Needed
If the serious injury threshold applies, we need medical documentation of how serious and long-lasting your whiplash injury is to show that it is “serious.” If we can show the insurance company or the jury that your whiplash caused permanent injuries that will come back to bother you periodically or constantly interfere with your daily activities, we can show the injury deserves higher damages.
Calculating Damages
Once we have established how serious your whiplash injury is, we can start calculating damages:
Medical Bills
The cost of all treatment should be covered. This can include ongoing pain medication or muscle relaxers to deal with the ongoing pain of whiplash. It can also cover ongoing physical therapy or therapeutic massage/chiropractic appointments.
Lost Wages
If your whiplash caused you to miss work for a few weeks or months while you healed, this can be covered. If it will cause periodic missed work on “bad days” down the line, then that should also be estimated and included in the settlement cost.
Pain and Suffering
If your injury is serious enough to qualify as a “serious injury” or you have an unlimited right to sue policy, then you can also claim pain and suffering damages. These have no bills or records showing their cost, and we must calculate them with special rules.
Other Damages
Other economic damages from the accident that caused your whiplash can also be claimed.
Calculating Economic Damages
Calculating past economic damages means looking at all bills, receipts, pay stubs, and other financial records to see what money you spent. Medical bills and vehicle repair bills/appraisals are helpful here.
Calculating future costs means extrapolating those costs into the future, potentially with help from medical and financial experts to say what you will continue to need and what it will cost.
Calculating Pain and Suffering
Often, the initial healing process for whiplash lasts only a few days or weeks. This might not result in particularly high pain and suffering, but when the injury is long-lasting or even permanent, this results in higher damages.
Figuring out exactly how much to claim usually means using a combination of these two calculation methods:
Multiplier Method
With the multiplier method, we choose a factor from 1.5 to 5 to multiply the rest of your economic damages by. This multiplier is set based on how severe the injury is.
This means longer-lasting whiplash with a bigger effect on your daily life would be more severe, resulting in higher pain and suffering.
Per Diem Method
Alternatively, we can choose a per-day cost and multiply that by the number of days you experience pain and suffering. This can be more helpful in calculating pain and suffering that has healed 100% because we can say how many days you suffered for.
For any potential future suffering, we can estimate it as a number of days per year you will face “bad days” or something to that effect.
How Can You Tell if a Settlement is Enough?
Always check with your NJ car accident lawyers. It can be hard to know on your own how much the case is worth, so let our lawyers calculate damages and compare the settlement offer to our calculations.
What if the Settlement Offer is Too Low?
If the insurance company’s offer is too low, you can choose not to take it. From there, we can negotiate and provide more evidence of how serious your injury is, or we can take the case to trial.
Can You Get More Money After Settlement?
When you file your initial car accident claim with your insurance, it may pay some damages – but this is not considered a “settlement” with the defendant. This still leaves an opportunity to file a claim against the defendant and potentially settle that later.
However, if you take any money from the defendant or their insurance company, or if you sign any settlement documents with them, the case may be settled and over. If you already settled this way, you cannot undo the settlement, go back to court for more money, or claim additional damages against that defendant.
Call Our Car Accident Lawyers in NJ Today
For your free case evaluation with our Jersey City personal injury lawyers, call Agrapidis & Maroules, P.C. at (201) 777-1111.