Personal Injury Primer

City Seeks Damages After Ship Takes Down a Bridge https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-347-City-Seeks-Damages-After-Ship-Destroys-Bridge.mp3 I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Today’s question comes from a client asking out of curiosity if the City of Baltimore would be able to successfully sue the companies involved in the Frances Scott Key Bridge collapse that occurred not long ago. The ship that struck the bridge killed several workers and caused significant economic damage to the bridge itself and commerce in general. The city has lost tax revenue due to the slowdown in business generated by the use of the bridge, as well as revenue generated by the port authority. In a case such as that described, long-established principles of negligence would apply. The city likely will have a solid case against the owner of the ship, any company that chartered the ship, perhaps the shippers of the cargo, any entity operating the ship, the manufacturer of the cargo ship, and perhaps others. Most likely, all the listed entities have insurance. No question that the bridge collapse had inflicted a financial loss on the city and likely other regional governmental entities, as well as the state. Predicting the outcome of such a lawsuit is beyond the scope of this episode. But some things to consider include, examining evidence of the value of the loss. What was the value of the bridge before it collapsed? What was the expected useful life of the bridge? What will it cost to replace the bridge? These questions may seem simple but they are not. The bridge had value of course before it was destroyed, but what value? There is no market for used bridges. Another city could not have stepped in and purchased the bridge before it collapsed, for example. But of course, states have constructed and then sold or leased toll roads to private companies for millions if not billions of dollars. What if the ship owner and operator have insufficient insurance to cover all of the damage? The families of the workers killed will be suing for damages as well. Might the ship owner and operator file for bankruptcy to limit their responsibility for damages? Suppose there is sufficient insurance, will insurance carriers be driven out of business as a result of this event? Will insurance carriers and re-insurers seek to pool coverage? Will certain losses be able to be prioritized? As one can see, setting aside questions about fault, the question of damage is quite complex. As just another example, suppose a bridge maintenance company had a contract to paint the bridge. That company may now have no way to stay in business if compensation is not available. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 347 City Seeks Damages After Ship Takes Down a Bridge first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

Duty to Control Personal Body Movements https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-346-Duty-to-Control-Personal-Body-Movements.mp3 I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Not too long ago there was a news report of a person injured when a costumed character at an amusement park knocked him over. The injured party sued and alleged that while he was bent over, tying his child’s shoelaces, a park employee dressed in a costume knocked him to a concrete sidewalk leading to broken teeth and a neck injury. This type of injury is not as unusual as it might seem. A person has a legal duty to use reasonable care to control their body movements to avoid slamming into another person and knocking them down. The duty is similar to the obligation to use reasonable care to control a motor vehicle to avoid colliding with someone. A person moving about near other people as a pedestrian must use similar due care to avoid striking another person and knocking them to the ground or otherwise hurting them. A person employed by an amusement park to walk around in a costume and entertain has no less of a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid colliding with and harming others in their immediate vicinity. Wearing a costume, especially one that might interfere with the wearer’s vision, is not an excuse to injure someone. Quite likely in the case described in the news, the amusement park that employed the costumed character would have an equal duty to manage the person employed to wear a costume. That duty would include the obligation to train the individual wearing the costume and to make sure that they can see their surroundings (or supply someone to act as a spotter for them) so that they do not inadvertently strike others, or bump into them, or knock them over accidentally. Frequently amusement parks will have a non-costumed individual spot for a costumed individual. The spotter will be tasked with assisting the employee in the costume to keep aware of his or her surroundings and help them avoid hurting someone. If the spotter fails to prevent an injury, the spotter might also be held responsible for injuries caused by the person in the costume. The obligation to use reasonable care would apply not only in the setting of an amusement park but also in cases where, for example, a restaurant chain might choose to have someone dress up as a chicken and walk around holding a sign suggesting that customers should eat more beef or fish. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 346 Duty to Control Personal Body Movements first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

Machine Calculation of Pain and Suffering https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-345-Machine-Calculation-of-Pain-and-Suffering.mp3 I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. With the rise of AI machines it’s likely that insurance companies have secured the services of such a computer and are using it, or will soon use it, to try to calculate pain-and-suffering damages relating to injury claims. When there is an injury claim, some types of damages are easily calculable. These damages are traditionally referred to as special damages. What exactly are special damages? Things that you can calculate such as medical bills, income lost from being unable to work, property repair costs, and other out-of-pocket expenses. General damages are different from special damages. General damages include such things as pain-and-suffering, physical and mental discomfort, emotional distress, anxiety linked to the accident or injuries. The question is can a computer be used to accurately place a dollar value on pain? And if you did have such a computer, what information would you feed into the computer to make such a calculation? What insurance companies often attempt to do to value pain and suffering, is to plug-in information about special damages into a computer system, and have the computer calculate a projection of what value a jury might assign to a claim. Keep in mind, in many cases special damages have no logical correlation to pain and suffering. For example, consider a 30 year old woman who has to have a leg amputated below the knee due to an injury. It might cost $5,000 to amputate the leg, but the lifetime pain and suffering and inability to function as normal, likely would be valued by a human on a jury in the millions of dollars. Nevertheless, using a computer programmed to use special damage figures to calculate general damages may appeal to an insurance company that wants to make a simple evaluation of a claim. But, what numbers get fed to a computer? Is the computer told to look at the medical bills charged? Or, should the computer consider what was paid on the actual bills after write-offs? Most medical bills get reduced by the result of a health insurance contract reduction provision, or a government imposed reduction. For example Medicare might see a bill from the surgeon for $100,000, but pay the surgeon only $5000. A health insurance provider might look at a $100,000 surgery bill, and through some written agreement, pay the surgeon only $25,000. Another number that this type of computer system will examine is a daily dollar rate assigned to the number of days a person experiences pain, or the number of days they could not work. What happens next is the computer program adds up all the numbers and tries to project from those numbers what a jury might decide is the value of the claim. For example, let’s assume that the numbers in the categories we just discussed add up to $15,000. Whoever programs a computer may decide that pain should be considered to be 1.5 times the total, and another computer system might be programmed to decide that 3.5 times that total is what could be expected to be awarded by a jury. Neither computer may be right, and neither computer system will be even remotely close to what a human jury would decide. After these types of calculations are made other factors come in. Another typical factor would be to look at the projection of fault for the accident that resulted in the injury. Another factor might be whether the injuries are objectively observable, or whether the injuries are subjective and rely only on the report of the injured party. If a person suffered a scar or they are permanently damaged for life, such factors come into play. The problem with a computer program like this is that there is no mechanism to take into effect all the factors that a human being would take into effect as that human being sits on a jury and listens to all of the evidence and evaluates the witnesses. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 345 Machine Calculation of Pain and Suffering first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

What is a Motion to Dismiss? https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-344-What-is-a-Motion-to-Dismiss.mp3 I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Today’s question comes from a caller who stated that his attorney dropped his case and told him he needed to get another lawyer. When asked why, the caller said that his lawsuit was challenged with a motion to dismiss. The attorney who no longer wanted to work on the case, said that he expected that the motion would be granted and saw no grounds to dispute the motion. The caller wanted to know his options. We sometimes get calls like this where an attorney has decided to discontinue representing someone after filing a complaint and then receiving a response. So what exactly is a motion to dismiss? Well think of it this way, it’s a motion asking the court to look at the complaint and rule that the complaint itself is legally insufficient, so much so, that the complaint ought to be tossed out of court in its entirety. To survive a motion to dismiss, the complaint must contain sufficient factual information, that if accepted as true, states a claim for relief that is plausible on its face. In other words, the complaint has to set forth facts that will permit a court to conclude that if all of the facts alleged are true, the defendant could reasonably be held liable for the misconduct alleged. Here’s a practical example, suppose when a complaint is filed the date is January 1, 2025. Suppose that the complaint itself refers to alleged misconduct that occurred on January 1, 2015. If a motion to dismiss is filed, the court must take as true that the misconduct alleged occurred in January of 2015, but the court may also look at the two-year statute of limitations, and conclude that if the misconduct indeed occurred 10 years earlier, there is no way for the plaintiff to prevail.  In such a fact situation a court must dismiss the complaint. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 344 What is a Motion to Dismiss? first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.

Filing a Complaint https://personalinjuryprimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ep-343-Filing-a-Complaint.mp3 I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana. Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics. Today’s question comes from a client whom we asked to review a complaint that we are preparing to file in her case. She wanted to understand what a complaint is and why it needs to be filed in court. To initiate a lawsuit the party bringing the lawsuit, called the plaintiff, starts the lawsuit by filing a complaint in court. A complaint is a document that sets forth the operative facts on which a lawsuit is based and describes the legal issues on which the claim is being made. Indiana is a notice pleading state which means the complaint does not have to describe the situation in great detail. Instead, it must state sufficient facts to put the responding party, called the defendant, on notice of the claim against them. For ease of reference, the drafter of a complaint usually will number each paragraph. Ideally, each numbered paragraph will focus on a particular fact. Once a defendant is served with the complaint the defendant must file an answer to the complaint. The more precision in drafting a complaint the more the defendant will have to respond point by point to the facts outlined in the complaint. The defendant must choose to admit or deny the facts outlined in each enumerated paragraph of a complaint. In Indiana, the complaint must not state a specific dollar amount sought in damages. In years gone by, some attorneys would garner publicity by filing a lawsuit seeking an outrageous sum. The newspaper would report on the complaint and identify the attorney. But, putting in any amount, especially a low amount, also could be used to limit the plaintiff’s recovery to the stated low amount. An additional thing about a complaint that is surprising to some people, is that the complaint may set forth alternative theories of recovery or inconsistent theories of recovery. For example, a complaint may in one count describe an injury as being due to the negligence of a defendant and in another count state that the injury was due to intentional wrongdoing by a defendant. I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”The post Ep 343 Filing a Complaint first appeared on Personal Injury Primer.