Vegas Personal Injury Law Blog

As a personal injury lawyer, I have seen how trends in personal injury claims handling and litigation have changed over the years.  In this electronic age, information and documents posted on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace can potentially have a negative impact on personal injury claims.

Insurance Companies and defense attorneys are using these sites as a source to obtain damaging information about victims of personal injury accidents in their fight against compensating those victims for the personal injuries caused by their insureds.

If a person is involved in an automobile accident, he is likely to post some information concerning the accident, the injuries caused by the accident and how the injuries affected his life on a social networking site.  Insurance companies may find on these posts information that is favorable to them regarding how the accident happened, and/or they may find  information favorable to them concerning the development of injuries after an accident.  The more times that a story is told, the more likely that there will be inconsistencies.  Information posted on social networking sites may contradict subsequent accident and injury  reporting to insurance companies and to health care providers.  If contradictory information is obtained by an insurance company, this will certainly undermine the credibility of a personal injury claimant, and devalue his claim.

Credibility is an important factor to juries when they are asked to make decisions concerning an accident causing non-visible neck and back injuries. The general public has been well indoctrinated by insurance companies to get them to believe that all whiplash injuries are fraudulent.  A personal injury claimant’s credibility before a jury can be negatively impacted by photos and video of the claimant participating in physical or athletic activities after an accident. Any content that could portray a claimant in negative light should be taken off social media sites. The claimant should also have online friends refrain from posting this type of pictorial documentation from their own sites.

Posted information regarding illegal or immoral matters can be utilized by insurance companies and/or defense attorneys to put a personal injury claimant in a bad light and damage his character. A claimant must be very careful concerning what he posts. Google yourself to determine what content exists  that may compromise your claim. Think before your post, even on invitation-only sites. Don’t let anyone you don’t know become a friend after you make an accident claim.

Pictures or video of claimants riding motorcycles, motor boats, skateboards, bicycles or all terrain vehicles can undermine the value of their lawsuit or insurance claims.

The same guidelines should apply to the content of your e-mail accounts.

If you belong to 5 networks and have 100 friends on each network, potentially hundreds of thousands of people can view your posts; and, your posts may not be protected by privacy laws.

So,  personal injury claimants and litigants need to give sone thought to cleaning  up their social media pages after involvement in an injury producing accident.

Recently, I have had a number clients who have been involved in auto accidents where they have been partially at fault for an accident and have not been treated fairly by their own insurance company.

NRS 687B.385 states: “An insurer shall not cancel, refuse to renew, or increase the premium for renewal of a policy of motor vehicle insurance covering private passenger cars of commercial vehicles as a result of any claims made under the policy with respect to which the insured was not at fault.”

What is an “at-fault accident”?

This statute was interpreted by the Nevada Supreme Court in the case of State Division of Ins. vs. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 116 Nev. 290, 995 P.2d 482(2000).  This case interpreted NRS NRS 687B.385 to include accidents in which the insured was 50% at fault or less.  This case put NRS 687B.385 in conformance with NRS 41.141, Nevada’s comparative negligence statute.  This decision means that an insured is at fault for an accident when his liability for a two-vehicle  accident is exactly 50/50, even though he can still recover 50% of his damages from the other driver under NRS 41.141.

Therefore, an assessment of 50% liability (or more) by your insurance company for an accident as an at-fault accident and  will probably result in an increase in your auto insurance rates.  If you are involved in another at-fault accident, your policy will probably be cancelled. Let me give you a real life example.

A vehicle making a lefthand turn going southbound to eastbound at an intersection enters a very wide lane, and stays to the left hand side of that lane.  Another vehicle, at about the same time, traveling northbound makes a right hand turn and enters the same lane but stays to the right hand side of the same lane.  The driver of the vehicle on the right then comes face to face with roadway signs indicating that the roadway lane is narrowing and she must merge to the left.  She does so and collides with the other vehicle traveling on the left hand side of the lane.

Both drivers are insured by the same insurance company. The vehicle on the right was forced to merge left because the lane narrowed into a single lane width. Roadside hazard/warning signs forced the driver on the right to merge to her left. The vehicle on the left was already on the left side of the roadway and did not have to change it’s position within the lane to enter the narrowed portion of the lane.

Anyone reading this fact pattern would automatically assume that the driver on the right hand side of the travel lane is more at fault for this accident than the driver on the left.  However, the insurance carrier, who was the same company for both parties, determined liability at 50/50 and assessed both drivers with an at-fault accident and raised both drivers’ insurance rates.

The insurance company’s assessment of 50/50 liability for this accident is unrealistic because:

1. The driver on the left had no duty to anticipate the fact that the  driver on the right was going to swerve into her vehicle;
2. If the vehicle on the right did use her left hand turn signal, the vehicle on the left, could not see it because the vehicle on the right was not in front of her vehicle; and
3. The accident occurred eighty-six (86) feet east of the intersection where both vehicles entered the same roadway.

According to Nevada case law the adverse effect of a 50/50 assessment of liability will result in the increase of both drivers’ insurance rates for an at-fault accident.  In the event that there was  an assessment of 51/49 liability in favor of the driver on the left and against the driver on the right, the insurance company could not raise the rates for the driver on the left for an at fault accident.

Obviously, there is no exact science to assessment liability for any accident, however based on the facts and circumstances of this accident, a 50/50 liability assessment is completely unrealistic.

So, why did the insurance company raise the rates of both drivers? The only reason is for an economic benefit. Raising the rates of both drivers results in the insurance company recouping its losses for this accident more quickly from the increased insurance premiums from both drivers, as compared to raising the rates for only one driver. And, the insurance company only has to pay 50% of each party’s property damage, thus forcing the insured drivers to pay their own collision deductibles in order to have their vehicles repaired.

After the insurance company was asked to review the facts and circumstances surrounding this accident and to change it’s liability decision by one percent in favor of the vehicle on the left, they refused.

Now, if in the future, liability can be determined by a trier of fact in favor of the vehicle on the left, will the insurance company return the driver on the left’s increased premiums and collision deductible?  Did the insurance company act in bad faith concerning their liability apportionment decision?

Therefore, if you are in an at-fault accident where your insurance company assesses liability against you at 50/50 (or more), you will be assessed with an at fault accident. You should also  be aware of the adverse consequences of increased rates and cancellation of your policy.  You should also consult an attorney for legal advice concerning the insurance company’s decision.

If you or your children are involved with a fender bender accident where you are at fault, or partially at-fault, and  nobody is hurt, and law enforcement isn’t involved;  you should consider working out the property damage with the other driver to avoid increased insurance rates and/or cancellation of your policy.

Pain and Suffering Damages are the effects on a person’s life as a result of physical and emotional injuries.  They include the loss of enjoyment of life and pain and discomfort doing daily activities such as cleaning the house, going out with the family and raising children. Placing a value on pain and suffering resulting from a motor vehicle accident is a is a difficult task for any mediator, arbitrator or juror involved with the personal injury case.  There’s no one to scientific formula, chart or table that attorneys and insurance companies can look to you determine the value of a person’s physical and emotuional pain and suffering as the result of an accident.

I was surfing the Internet recently when I came across a web site that claims to evaluate  personal injury claims.  I typed in a medical bills of $5,498.00, vehicle repair costs of $1,000.00, rental car expenses of $250 and wage loss of $500.  The program gave me an estimated claim value of between $13,006.95 to  $26,243.41.  Based on my 25 years of experience in dealing with personal injury cases, I find this to be a simplistic and unrealistic evaluation, especially in situations where a person is not represented by an attorney. Don’t rely on this type of information to evaluate the value of your auto accident case.

Oftentimes, the victim that suffers the most as a result of an auto accident does not receive adequate compensation for pain and suffering because that victim has inadequate documentation, incomplete documentation, or lacks good pain and suffering witnesses. Studies have shown that juries evaluate pain-and-suffering  higher in urban settings than juries in  rural settings.

There are many factors that need to be considered in determining the value of pain and suffering.  Juries (and even insurance companies) look to the credibility of the victim as a witness.  Arbitrators, mediators, jurors and insurance companies also look to see if a person’s actions following an accident are consistent with someone who is in pain.  They look to see how the injured parties everyday life is changed as a result of an accident.  Sometimes extraneous factors such as pain tolerance, occupation and marital status are sympathy factors that can increase the value of a personal injury claim.  The skill and experience of the attorney representing the injured party can influence the evaluation of pain and suffering damages.

Juries often look to, and are swayed by, factors such as the age.  Older people probably will suffer more from auto  accident injuries because their body  cannot recuperate as well younger people.  Juries often have the mind set  that  that younger people should heal more quickly than older people.  Some juries  think that a person suffers more because he continues to care for his children while healing for an injury.  One of the most of the important factors that jurors consider in evaluating pain-and-suffering is the honesty of the injured party.  Sometimes the injured party can be too prepared and too confident on the stand.  

People that have an aggravation of a pre-existing injuries will usually receive less for pain and suffering then people with new injuries.  This has a lot to do with insurance company evaluation.  Their position is that aggravation cases are easy to defend. However, in litigation it should be the attorney’s job to you convince the jury that the old injury was aggravated and that the than aggravation of a pre-existing condition requires more medical treatment and results in more residual pain and suffering than an original injury.

More medical treatment does not necessarily mean more money for a pain and suffering.  However, the total amount of medical bills is definitely one factor that is considered.  Running up medical bills unnecessarily is looked at with a fair degree of suspicion.  Stretching out treatment on a minor injury can be interpreted as greed on the part of the injured party, and this is certainly the position that will be taken by the insurance company.  Jurors have a tendency to award higher damages for pain-and-suffering on accidents that involve major property damage as opposed to minor property damage.

I was in a settlement conference  with  District Court Judge Timothy Williams on a wrongful death case.  The judge told my clients that juries are very unpredictable.  He gave the example of two  separate  cases that went to trial recently involving similar injuries with meniscus surgery following a knee injury.  Two different juries came back with divergent evaluations of medical bills and pain and suffering.  In one case the jurors awarded a reasonable amount in a trial where evidentiary issues should have drastically reduced damages, and in the second case the jurors’ award reduced the actual medical expenses drastically and awarded the injured party nothing for pain and suffering. 

Therefore, all we can say about the value of pain and suffering on an auto  accident case is that there is no definite formula.  Generally, the better pain and suffering is documented, the higher the award for pain and suffering.  The concept that pain and suffering is worth some multiple of the medical expenses is not a standard of evaluation that is uniformly applied.

As you can see documentation is the key to obtaining a reasonable settlement on the personal-injury auto case.