EP10 S04: What Is The Best Way To Max Dollars Value in your Personal Injury Lawsuit

Maximize the VALUE for your personal injury lawsuit or case by listening to this episode.

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Full Transcript:

Hi everybody. My name is Arkady Frekhtman and I’m a trial lawyer at the F&A Injury Lawyers here in Brooklyn, New York.

If you were in a car crash with a truck, with a commercial vehicle, a company car, or any kind of van, car, box truck, any kind of vehicle with a large policy, it could be owned by an individual, it could be owned by a company, it could be a fish store delivering fish, it could be a pizza delivery, man, it doesn’t matter, what is the easiest way for you to maximize value and to get as much as possible for yourself as an injury client, as a serious injury victim? You want to get as much as possible as efficiently and quickly as possible. How do you do that? Well, the number one way for most people is if a doctor that you’re seeing recommends you to get further treatment, like a pain management injection known as an epidural steroid injection, or perhaps they recommend a percutaneous discectomy that you if you have that pain, and if that doctor thinks you need it, that you listen to the doctor and you go ahead and you get it.

Because let me tell you the difference between people who go to a chiropractor and get adjustments, people who just go to physical therapy and they show up and they get the little stimulation or they get their back cracked and then they get the little TENS unit or whatever equipment they get, and then they go home and then they stop treating, and then they say, “You know what, that’s it.” Those kinds of clients usually get anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000. Maybe on a good day, they can get 15,000 or 20,000, 25,000. But the clients that get the injections, the clients that go and because of the herniation or the bulge is so painful that it’s causing radiating pain from the neck down to the arms or from the lower back down to the legs known as radiculopathy. And the doctor says, “You need a percutaneous discectomy. You need an epidural steroid injection. You need something more, maybe another kind of injection.”

And the people that actually get those injections, those cases, for example, just epidurals go anywhere from 20,000 on the low end. In fact, we even had one case with one, I believe it was only one or two epidurals, but it was a larger policy, it was a million dollar policy with the truck, and we got $150,000 for that client. And then the clients that need the percutaneous discectomy where the Stryker decompressor goes in and it suctions out the leak from the disc and relieves the pain, first of all, it’s a win-win because you’re going to feel better. You’re getting rid of the injury that’s causing the pain. And second of all, those cases go anywhere from a low of, I would say, 80,000 or 90,000, up to a high of over 500,000. In fact, we had a recent case that we took to trial in Manhattan, which is a conservative jury venue, and we got $547,000 for a gentleman who had a percutaneous discectomy. And we’ve had many cases go for 350, 300, 375, 275.

So I would say the average is about 100, 150, even going into the twos, and many, many cases in the threes and some of the fours. So that’s the easiest way for you to really maximize the value of your case. If you’re already getting the treatment if you’re having the pain, if the symptoms are there, if the medical literature and the doctors, the clinicians if they clinically think that you need it and they’re recommending it, it’s a very good idea to do it. And the other issue becomes if they say that you need it and they put it in the report that this patient would benefit, let’s say, from a percutaneous discectomy or this patient would benefit from an epidural steroid injection, and then you don’t do it, then what the insurance companies could also say is that you’re failing to mitigate or lessen your own damages, because you have this injury, you have this herniated disc, you could get rid of it by getting this procedure, which is fairly simple, but you’re choosing not to against medical advice.

So now if the herniation gets worse and you need a full-blown, let’s say, surgery, the insurance company could argue, “Well, you’re the one who caused that, not us, because you could have prevented it with this procedure.” Do you see? So there’s a lot of tricky things that insurance companies can do. So, for the most part, this is one of the easiest ways to maximize your case is by listening to your doctor and making sure you get the right treatment. Okay, have a great day, everyone. Bye-bye.

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