In this video, attorney Ted Spaulding explains the components involved in understanding how to value your personal injury claim in Georgia. He details what is most important and how overall claims are processed.
What is my personal injury claim worth? Watch this video to find out the components involved in valuing your personal injury claim. Hi, I’m Ted Spaulding. I’m an Atlanta personal injury lawyer and the founding partner here at Spaulding Injury Law. This is, obviously, it’s the all-important question, right? When we are in an injury situation, we always want to know, “Well, what is this claim potentially worth?” There’s a lot of puffery that goes on in this industry. Unfortunately, some of that is caused by lawyers. You see TV commercials where they’re telling you, “I can’t guarantee you this, but look, I got $300,000 for this client or $500,000 for this one.” Well, the takeaway from those things is you see how wide-ranging the value of these claims can be, but what really goes into it? You need to have an idea of that going forward. But the first thing you got to realize is early on, your lawyer is not going to know the value of the claim. More importantly, an insurance adjuster doesn’t know the value of the claim. It’s why you don’t want to try to settle your case within weeks or even quite frankly, months, if you’re really injured, of your incident. You don’t know yet exactly what the value of your claim is. Okay. Ultimately, you only have a right for a jury of 6 to 12 of your peers to tell you what it’s worth, but we can empirically look at all the facts with experience what has happened in that jurisdiction in the past with these types of cases to get a general range of what the value is, but that’s the best it’s gonna be, is a general range because no one knows on that particular day with that particular jury when you try your case, what are they going to give you for your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering? We just don’t know for sure, right?
So some of the components to think about. It’s all based off of what your injuries are, okay? I say all, yes, there’s a few other components, but the biggest, most important thing are, what are your injuries? Therefore, how long are you treating? And therefore, what are your medical bills? How long you’re out of work because of the injury, all of those things that build to the value of your case. Obviously, the smaller things are, are there liability issues? So is there an argument that maybe it’s a 50-50 situation? That lowers the value of your case, right, because there’s a potential that the jury could say, “Hey, this guy’s not 100% at fault, so we’re not going to give this person $300,000. We’re going to give them something smaller.” Okay. So that does play a factor too. And then I’ve got other topics, videos and things about venue jurisdiction, those sorts of things that change value of a case from one location where it’s being tried to another. But, again, the biggest takeaway is it’s all about what are your injuries and how much treatment do you end up having. That is the bulk of where the value comes from because that’s what the system is here for. It’s here to compensate you for injuries that you wouldn’t have otherwise suffered if not for the negligence of someone else. So, hopefully, this helps you get an idea of how personal injury claims are valued. If you have any other questions about this topic, feel free to reach out to me. If you have a personal injury claim that you would like for us to look at to see if we can handle for you, comment to this video below. Go to our website, spauldinginjurylaw.com, we have a contact form on there that you can fill out, or give me a phone call. Two phone numbers for you, 770-744-0890 or 470-695-9950. Thanks so much for watching this video.
