After a couple years of litigation, the Osterbind Law team settled a personal injury case for $123,000.
In this case, our client was driving through an intersection in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia when a tractor trailer blew through the red light and caused a wreck. The actions of this professional driver were surprising after the accident because he maintained that he had a green light but several witnesses were prepared to testify otherwise.
Initially, our client had back and neck pain that, with the help of some physical therapy at Rehab Associates of Central Virginia, resolved fairly quickly. Our client also complained at the hospital of shoulder pain. This shoulder pain remained fairly constant and the only thing that made it better was modified activity. He kept returning to OrthoVirginia where ultimately he was sent for an MRI which showed tearing in his rotator cuff.
The doctors related the shoulder injury to the car wreck because it was clear that our client’s complaints of shoulder pain began with the wreck. The doctors operated on our client’s shoulder with significant success. His shoulder, after rehab, began feeling like it used to although every now and again he is still reminded that it is not like it used to be. Our client is a very active person with a very active job. He needs to have full function of his arms and his shoulder. This surgery gave him that function.
We had to file suit while the client was still treating because the statute of limitations was approaching. We withheld service initially to let the client finish treating and to attempt to resolve the case. After the treatment finished, our client had incurred over $37,000 in medical bills. We made a demand and the insurance company only offered $37,000.
So we began the litigation process.
The insurance company later offered $50,000 but said unequivocally that they were not considering the shoulder injury in the evaluation even though the doctors all related the surgery to the wreck and the insurance company didn’t have any evidence of a pre-existing injury. After receiving this response, we dug a little deeper and realized that the insurance company was not being truthful. Excluding the shoulder, the medical bills were around $7,000. A $50,000 offer on $7,000 in medical bills for a soft tissue injury will never happen. Perhaps with the right jury one could get a verdict, but for the second offer of settlement, it was unheard of. So we discerned that the insurance company was playing games with us.
So we pushed the litigation and discovery harder and simultaneously worked to force the insurance company to put real money on the table so we could negotiate in good faith.
During that process, we were able to illustrate the significance of our client’s injury and the reasonableness of his treatment. Working as a team, Brandon focused on the discovery and litigation and David Abraham focused on discussions with the insurance adjuster. The pressure to produce more information and the constant push from the Osterbind Law team forced the insurance company to increase their offers incrementally leading up to a $123,000 settlement.
Insurance companies play games all the time. The question is will you recognize it when they play the game on you? If you are uncomfortable dealing with the insurance companies, give us a call we’ll sit down with you for free to discuss your case.
The Virginia State Bar requires that we give a disclaimer whenever we talk about case results. As we are sure you already know, the case result described above must be read in context with the unique facts of this particular case. Each case result depends upon a variety of factors unique to each case, which is why we describe those facts in detail. To be clear, this case result does not guarantee or predict a similar result in any future case undertaken by the lawyers at Osterbind Law, PLLC.
