Christian Reed

I was introduced to determining "pain and suffering" valuations while on a
jury last year. As you note, property and lost wages are easy, but pain and
suffering (along with future lost wages) are far more subjective.

The surprising part to me, from sitting on the jury, was that in a group of
people from all walks of life some people came in quite high for pain and
suffering (generally those folks had higher incomes), and some folks came
in low. And folks with similar medical issues were actually both high and
low, either feeling that having the condition was awful, or that getting a
condition was part of life and that you should just deal with it.

In the end, though, our jury split down the middle. The number seemed high
to half the room, and low to the other half (both were well below what the
personal injury lawyer wanted). And I came away thinking that neither side
in the lawsuit was going to be happy, but that justice had been served.

So my advice would be that the number you end up with should leave you
feeling somewhat ambivalent about the matter. That you didn't make out like
a bandit, but that while things sucked you were somewhat compensated.

... And if the number is any higher than that, grab the settlement!

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I was hit by a car a week and a half ago and have filed claims with my
insurance for my injuries and the drivers for property damage. She was
clearly at fault. I didn't have any broken bones but was reasonably beat up
as comes from hitting a car. Her insurance has already paid for my bike
(yay!) and offered me a settlement. I'm sure the first offer is low but I
have no clue what a "fair" settlement is. Lost wages is straight forward
but how does one figure pain and suffering and so on? I'm sure there are
plenty of folks out there that have been thru the process and, as I have no
clue, would love to hear anyone's thoughts on how to determine what's fair
when you've been blasted off your bike in the middle of race season.
Thanks, Casey