Speaker 1: Most personal injury claims are worth very little. I'll explain why. Now, I know what you may be thinking. I see billboards everywhere that show huge settlements. Here's the deal. Those big settlements are not the average settlement. Often the advertised settlement is one of the lawyer's best settlements. They're showing you their best work. I heard a great saying at a personal injury seminar over 15 years ago. It still holds true today. The saying is when a plane lands, it doesn't make the news. This means that common events do not make the news. Thus, you are not going to see the most common settlements on billboards or on the news or TV. If they were, I wouldn't have to make these videos. I could be at a resort sipping a pina colada. Can you please bring me another one? Let's start by looking at soft tissue injuries. These are injuries where you have pain, but you don't have a broken bone or tear in your ligament Examples of soft tissue injuries are pain in your neck, your back, your shoulder, or your knee. On your best day, you're typically looking at a $25,000 settlement. However, this assumes that six things happen. Number one, someone else is clearly at fault for the accident. Number two, there is a lot of damage to the vehicles, assuming it's a car accident. Number three, you got medical treatment shortly after the accident. Number four, your out-of-pocket medical bills are big. Number five, the other driver has bodily injury liability insurance, or you have uninsured motorist insurance. Number six, you're dealing with one of the better insurance companies. For example, I represented Odalis and her son in a car accident. She and her son were rear-ended. I settled each of their personal injury cases for $25,000, but that was only because they had all six of those factors in their case. Number one, another driver crashed into the back of the car that Odalis and her son were in. Number two, there was a lot of damage to the vehicles. Number three, they took an ambulance to the hospital, which of course means they got treatment shortly after the accident. Number four, they didn't have health insurance, so their out-of-pocket medical bills were big. Number five, the other driver had bodily injury liability insurance. Number six, we were dealing with a good insurance company, AAA, Auto Club South. And there's another factor that pushed the at-fault driver's insurance company to pay $25,000 to each injured person here. The per-accident policy bodily injury liability limits was $50,000. This means the most that the insurance company had to pay to all the injured people combined was $50,000. That insurance company made the decision to pay the claim and be done with the case. If there is a limited insurance limit and several people who are making a claim, it puts pressure on the insurance company to settle faster. Now, getting a $25,000 settlement for soft tissue injuries usually is your best day. On the flip side, most car accident settlements are small. A few years ago, Geico's confidential documents were revealed. Their average payout was about $14,000 for personal injury. It gets worse. If there is little damage to the cars involved in the accident and you just have pain in your neck, your back, your shoulder, or your knee, you might not get more than $1,000 or $2,000 or so. That's because juries often don't award much money for pain and suffering compensation if you just have pain, but no broken bone or major problem. Juries usually don't award money for injuries that you can't clearly see on an X-ray or an MRI. And this is especially true if there isn't much damage to the cars involved in the accident. But that's not it. In a no-fault state like Florida, you often need a permanent injury to get a penny or more for pain and suffering, but it doesn't stop there. Many drivers are uninsured or carry the state minimum bodily injury liability limits. This is especially true now with inflation hitting hard. If you have a broken bone, your best day is likely $105,000 settlement. This is because the settlement value of pain and suffering for most broken bones is worth much less than $100,000. Insurance companies know this. That $105,000 settlement amount assumes five things. Number one, someone else is clearly at fault for the accident. Number two, the other driver or liable business has bodily injury liability insurance or you have uninsured motorist insurance. Number three, the insurance company that you're dealing with is average or better. Number four, the doctor says in writing that your fracture caused or worsened your arthritis and you may need a future surgery. Again, the $105,000 figure is likely your best settlement outcome for a broken bone where you don't have surgery. I settled a car accident injury case for over $100,000 where my client had a broken leg and his doctor said that it worsened arthritis that he had before the accident. The doctor said that he may need future surgery if his knee instability worsened. Once I sent the doctor's note about the future surgery to the at-fault driver's insurance company, they increased their offer from around $15,000 to $85,000. Most cases where you have a broken bone settle for way under $100,000. If a doctor puts a plate or rod and screws in your body due to the accident, the full value of pain and suffering is usually at least $100,000 or more. I'm talking about if a doctor puts a plate and screws in your wrist, your leg, your arm, or another body part. I've settled cases like this for over $300,000 where my client just had one surgery. But in these cases that I settled for over $300,000 or more, either one or two things happened. The driver or person who was at fault had a big bodily injury liability insurance policy limit or my client had a big uninsured motorist insurance limit on their auto insurance policy. In many cases, you aren't so lucky. If a surgeon drills several plates or screws into your body, the full value of your pain and suffering is likely over $1 million or more for pain and suffering. Brain injury and wrongful death claims can each be worth over $1 million. After an accident, you can use several tactics that may get the insurance company to pay you thousands of dollars more. To learn what these hacks are, watch this video here or click on the link in the description below. And if you're seriously injured in Florida or on a cruise and you think that someone else may be at fault, click on the link in the description below to see if I can represent you.