Articles Posted in Personal Injury Verdicts

What is the settlement value of a personal injury claim where you have lost your vision in either one eye or both?

Metro Verdicts Monthly has a graph that reflects the median verdicts and settlements when the injury victim loses vision in one eye in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

What Is the Average Settlement Compensation for Loss of Sight in One Eye?

The median for compensation for losing vision in one eye in Maryland is $231,000. You could drive a truck through the gap between Washington, D.C., and Virginia’s median settlements and verdicts with loss of vision in one eye cases: Washington, D.C.’s median is $162,500; Virginia’s is $320,000.

These numbers are a bit misleading.   I think because most loss of vision cases are product liability cases. Many product liability cases have questionable liability, decreasing the average and median eye injury settlement amounts. If liability is not an issue, the compensation payouts in loss of sight in one-eye cases are much higher.

What Kind of Money Can I Expect for an Eye Injury at Work?

Workers’ compensation laws work differently than claims against other third parties. So if the claim is against your employer, a different set of laws apply. You can typically expect less in an eye injury settlement in a workers’ comp case against your employer than you would for the same injury when a third party was responsible.

But in some cases, the victim has two claims: a workers’ comp claim and a claim against the party that caused the harm.

Our lawyers have handled scores of lawsuits where the primary injury was head injuries and headaches.  This page is about projecting settlement amounts and jury payouts in head injury and headache lawsuits.

Mostly Subjective Injuries

I don’t get many headaches, a blessing I attribute to good hydration and good genetic fortune.  I’ve never had a traumatic head injury and have only had two concussions.  On the rare occasion that I do get headaches, they are debilitating. It really is hard to enjoy life when you have anything north of a mild headache.

Our clients sometimes incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.  They should be compensated for those bills. But the bigger harm in personal injury cases is the physical and emotional pain and suffering that comes with the victims’ injuries.

Today, we will look at average compensation for emotional injuries in an accident and medical malpractice cases to get a better idea of how much money victims can expect to receive as compensation for this type of intangible but often the most important injury.
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The original post was about an interesting verdict in New York in a “calling fore” golf course injury case.  The case is still interesting. But it is 11 years-old.  So I’m updating the post in 2020 by including sample settlements and verdicts in golf course injury lawsuits.

Golf Course Injury Verdicts and Settlements

• 2020, Texas: $125,000 Settlement. A minor girl suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling from a golf cart that was operated by a minor.  Look at the infographic we have on this page.  These injuries are unbelievably common.  The injury left her with permanent impairments. Her family sued the driver for recklessly operating the vehicle and failing to properly brake. They also sued the cart’s owner for negligently entrusting it to an incompetent operator. The case settled for $125,000. Obviously, there was a real problem for the victim’s lawyer in establishing fault because a case like this should be worth millions at trial if successful.

There are not many malpractice settlements and verdicts in Hawaii.  Here are three that I found and the awards or settlements are significant:

• 2019, Hawaii: $18,760,000 Settlement. A woman suffered an end-stage renal disease after experiencing a sepsis-related infection while giving birth at Tripler Medical Center. She experienced repeated and increased hypotension and tachycardia episodes after being transferred to the postpartum unit. Her lab results showed that she developed sepsis and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy. She eventually suffered permanent kidney damage. An infectious disease expert confirmed the group A streptococcus that resulted in toxic shock syndrome, sepsis, and bacteremia. Upon being discharged, she underwent hemodialysis three times a week. Within two years, she was hospitalized for gallstones and increased fluid in her abdomen. She and her husband sued Tripler for failing to timely diagnose or treat her kidney failure. They allege that she now needed a kidney transplant and other organ transplants throughout her life.  The magistrate judge initially awarded $24,743,668. However, the federal government appealed the case. It eventually settled for $18,760,000.
• 2013, Hawaii: $4,250,000 Award. A 15-year-old became paralyzed from the neck down after receiving steroid treatment for lupus. She developed a facial rash and slurred speech while visiting Hawaii with her family. She saw a pediatric rheumatologist, who diagnosed her with lupus. An MRI revealed some white matter density in her brain. Upon hospital admission, the rheumatologist prescribed weekly methylprednisone and prednisone doses to be taken for four weeks. The teenager responded well to the medication; her speech resolved, and her blood tests showed no increases in lupus antibodies. The rheumatologist had her continue this regimen. Right before the fourth week, the teen complained of muscle weakness. Her mother had her stop taking the medications. She eventually showed myopathy signs and was subsequently admitted to the hospital. She eventually could not move her body from the neck down. The teen and her mother sued the treating medical center for prescribing a high steroid dose. She now needed lifetime medical care because of her injuries. The first trial, held in 2009, awarded $6,150,000. However, the Hawaiian Supreme Court ordered a new trial based on erroneous evidence. The second trial’s jury awarded $4,250,000, which the court reduced to $1,800,000.

Metro Verdicts Monthly’s graph in this month’s issue is median settlements and verdicts in cervical (neck) herniated disc cases in Maryland, Washington, D.C, and Virginia. The median cervical herniated disc case in Maryland is $40,000. The Washington D.C. and Virginia medians are $50,000 and $36,000, respectively.

Settlement Values Vary Wildly

I always qualify this data with a “for what it is worth” caveat. With cervical herniated disc injuries, it is a “for what it is worth” squared. If a person says they are an actor, there are a lot of different degrees of being an actor. She may be Meryl Streep or her signature role may be “Crazed Killer #12” in a 5-second cameo appearance in a B movie. Herniated disc injuries are the same thing. Some people are walking around with cervical herniated discs that they cannot feel. For others, their lives are virtually destroyed by the injury.

Jury Verdict Research found that the median jury verdict in arm nerve damage cases over the last 10 years was $81,095. Arm nerve damage is defined by the study as injuries to the median nerve, radial nerve, ulnar nerve, musculocutaneous nerve, and axillary nerve which are all branches of the brachial plexus. Carpal tunnel injuries were, however, specifically excluded from this study.  Why?  The vast majority of carpal tunnel injury cases are not the result of medical malpractice or a motor vehicle accident.  Before you get outraged, it is absolutely true that people get CPS all of the time from tensing up and gripping the steering wheel before a crash. It is just that most of these injuries are not caused by car accidents. JVR provides more median verdicts for arm injuries:

• Arm amputations: $3,500,000 (75% of verdicts over $1,000,000)
• Arm and Elbow Nonfractures, Arm Nerve Damage and Arm Amputations: $61,863 (13% of awards over $1 million).

This blog post is about the settlement value of personal injury cases in Maryland and the chances that a plaintiff will prevail at trial?

How Often Do Victims Win Personal Injury Lawsuits?

After my blog entry about New Hampshire verdicts, I received a few emails from Maryland lawyers asking if I knew the data for Maryland plaintiffs. In Maryland, the accident victim is successful at trial in 83% of auto accident personal injury cases.

I tried to keep abreast of verdicts and settlements in personal injury cases in Maryland by reading the Maryland Daily Record, keeping up on the Maryland Association for Justice listserv, and getting the reports from Jury Verdict Research, Metro Verdicts, and just what I hear on the street from other lawyers.

The result of one case tells you nothing.  But if you keep following jury verdicts and settlements, you see patterns emerge.  Here are ten things I have learned from this process:

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[Note: This post was originally written in 2006 and then updated in 2014, 2018, and 2023.]

It is always interesting for a personal injury attorney to hear about trial verdicts in accident cases. We subscribe to Metro Verdicts Monthly, which summarizes primarily personal injury accident cases in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.