Damages

In a perfect world, we would be able to take the broken body of the victim of say a semi tractor trailer wreck or perhaps a oilfield explosion into the jury room and have the jury lay hands on this unfortunate person and restore their good health. They would make the chronic pain go away, they would repair the broken discs in the back or repair the hip such that future surgery will not be necessary and the person can go back to earning a living for their family. That would be wonderful, but our system just does not work that way. The only thing a jury can do is to provide financial compensation for all that has been lost as the result of the negligence that caused the injury. That is, they can order that money be paid in compensation. That is all that a jury can do for an injured person. At some point it has to be about money because that is all the system can do for an injured person.
As soon as money becomes the issue, then almost invariably the issue of greed comes up. The defense in most personal injury cases usually tries to make the argument that the plaintiff is just in it for the money and is just being greedy. This can be a persuasive argument, especially when a juror believes deep down that the system is corrupt and all lawsuits are frivolous. There are people who think that, and they usually won’t tell you how they feel when you are picking a jury. They can hang back and say that they don’t feel strongly about the issue of frivolous lawsuits in the hope that they can get on the jury to do their part to fix the system. The ironic part of this is that sometimes they say something completely different when they are the ones who are injured.
I had a client call me recently about his case. He told me that he had a 770 credit score, and that he was worried sick that his account was about to be turned over to a collection agency because he did not have the $6,000 to pay a medical bill. He was injured when a drunk driver pulled out in front of his motorcycle and had to go to the emergency room. He suffered a series of fractures in his ankle. While we were trying to figure out how badly he was hurt, one of the doctors who treated him in the ER was threatening to turn him over for collection. Most people are very proud of their credit rating. When your credit gets damaged because of nonpayment of a bill, you may lose your ability to borrow money when you need it, or you might be charged a much higher interest rate for the credit you can get. Shouldn’t the drunk driver have to pay for that? When my client was driving to work the morning of his injury he was not looking for a lawsuit. He did not ask to be put in this situation, the drunk driver made that decision for him. Letting the drunk driver off the hook for damage to my client’s credit is like doing $50 worth of damage to your neighbor’s house and then offering him $25 as compensation. Remember that defendant’s can be greedy too.
The value of some types of injures are easily calculated. Damages for lost earnings are usually easy to calculate. If a person makes $500 a week, and he missed two weeks of work, it is easy to figure out the damages. Other kinds of damages are more ethereal. If you have been in an collision and your new car has $15,000 in repairs, that would seem like an easy calculation, but with “Carfax” a potential buyer for your car when you decide to sell it will be able to learn all about the prior wreck. A significant wreck will devalue your car when placed side by side with the same model of car that has not been wrecked. So, when you get the $15,000 in repairs paid for by his insurance company, have you really been fully compensated?
Future medical expenses are another complicated issue in compensation for damages. What do you do when your neurosurgeon says that right now you are doing okay, but this it is his opinion that at some point the future you will probably need a fusion of one of the discs in your neck to treat your ongoing neck pain. This means that you are going to be required to come up with another $60,000 to pay for this surgery in the future. The law in Wyoming allows for the recovery of future damages from an accident, which are reasonably probable to occur in the future. Are you being greedy for asking for money to pay for a surgery that you have not yet had? It is like anything else, I guess it depends upon whose neck we are talking about. If we are talking about your neck, it probably sounds perfectly fair and reasonable, but if it is your neighbor’s neck, well now that is a different matter.
I think most jurors try to do the best job they can. Jury duty is an awesome responsibility because the answers a jury provides to these kinds of damage questions can have huge ramifications not only to the injured claimants, but also to the drunk drivers and their insurance companies out there who may try to rely upon lawsuit bias to escape full responsibility for the damage they cause. Blaming the victim can be an effective strategy, but it only works if we all let it happen.