Should I Settle My Arizona Personal Injury Case?
Mark Breyer
October 01, 2009
Many people would like to avoid hiring a personal injury lawyer. Instead, if possible, they would like to settle their personal injury claim and avoid having to deal with lawyers, courts, and so forth. However, when people try to handle the case on their own, they are often left facing the question as to whether or not they should settle their case.
Unfortunately, there is usually not a simple answer to this question. The question of whether to settle the case involves a number of factors. First, what is the claim worth? Understand that when we talk about what a claim is worth we do not mean what is "fair." "Fairness" is not really the way the case should be judged. The real question is whether or not a settlement will be more beneficial to the person who is injured and continuing forward with the case.
For instance, in almost every single case if it is never settled and a lawsuit is filed a jury will ultimately decide what the case is worth. More often than not, it is the decision of that unknown, future jury that will tell everybody what the case is worth. Even if everybody else would agree that "fair" for a certain case was $1 million, if the jury says the case is worth $1.00, that is the ultimate outcome and that is what the person will likely receive. Therefore, no matter how terrible the accident was and no matter how much everybody other than the jury may believe something closer to a million dollars would have been fair, the jury says the case is worth $1.00, it is worth $1.00. Therefore, if we had a crystal ball and we could see that the jury was going to award $1.00 to any given case and the offer to settle was $2.00, that would be a favorable settlement.
This can be a very difficult concept to follow and understand. It goes against our general notion that there should be fairness and justice in the legal system. However, in the end, it is really about trying to figure out what that crystal ball would show about what the jury would award. The example that we just gave works just as will if you flip it around. If everybody that you know and that you talk to agrees that a case has absolutely no merit and that a jury should award absolutely nothing, in other words if everybody agrees that $0.00 would be the "fair" result, it would not matter if we knew for sure that the jury was going to give $1 million. In that case, even a settlement of $900,000.00 would not be as favorable to the person who was injured as the million dollars the jury would give.
Obviously, none of have a crystal ball. However, experienced personal injury lawyers in Arizona throughout the country usually have a good feel for what a jury is most likely to do. Anybody who tells you with certainty what a jury will do is usually not being completely honest. A jury is made up of a group of people—in the State of Arizona on a personal injury case usually eight people—who are randomly assembled. All juries do not agree. They are made up of different people. Which people end up on that jury is unknown until the moment trial begins. Therefore, nobody knows with certainty what a jury will do. But an experienced personal injury lawyer is able to gauge, based upon past experience and what other jury verdicts have been in similar cases, what type of verdict would be expected.
Therefore, deciding whether to settle the case is not trying to determine what is "fair" but instead trying to determine what is the jury likely to do. Here is where a personal injury lawyer offers a great deal of value to somebody who is deciding what to do. The personal injury lawyer is best able to weigh out the different factors in every given case and compare them to what juries may do. Something that may seem very unimportant to the person who is hurt or the person who caused the accident may be well known by personal injury lawyers to be very important to the average jury.
Therefore, in deciding whether to settle a case the question is not to just to simply search out what you think the "right" result would be. Instead, it is usually a matter of finding somebody with knowledge and expertise as to what personal injury verdicts have been for similar cases with similar factors and, using that as a measuring stick, determining whether or not the case should be settled or whether it is better to move forward and try to allow the jury to get a final verdict as to what the case is worth.
Unfortunately, there is usually not a simple answer to this question. The question of whether to settle the case involves a number of factors. First, what is the claim worth? Understand that when we talk about what a claim is worth we do not mean what is "fair." "Fairness" is not really the way the case should be judged. The real question is whether or not a settlement will be more beneficial to the person who is injured and continuing forward with the case.
For instance, in almost every single case if it is never settled and a lawsuit is filed a jury will ultimately decide what the case is worth. More often than not, it is the decision of that unknown, future jury that will tell everybody what the case is worth. Even if everybody else would agree that "fair" for a certain case was $1 million, if the jury says the case is worth $1.00, that is the ultimate outcome and that is what the person will likely receive. Therefore, no matter how terrible the accident was and no matter how much everybody other than the jury may believe something closer to a million dollars would have been fair, the jury says the case is worth $1.00, it is worth $1.00. Therefore, if we had a crystal ball and we could see that the jury was going to award $1.00 to any given case and the offer to settle was $2.00, that would be a favorable settlement.
This can be a very difficult concept to follow and understand. It goes against our general notion that there should be fairness and justice in the legal system. However, in the end, it is really about trying to figure out what that crystal ball would show about what the jury would award. The example that we just gave works just as will if you flip it around. If everybody that you know and that you talk to agrees that a case has absolutely no merit and that a jury should award absolutely nothing, in other words if everybody agrees that $0.00 would be the "fair" result, it would not matter if we knew for sure that the jury was going to give $1 million. In that case, even a settlement of $900,000.00 would not be as favorable to the person who was injured as the million dollars the jury would give.
Obviously, none of have a crystal ball. However, experienced personal injury lawyers in Arizona throughout the country usually have a good feel for what a jury is most likely to do. Anybody who tells you with certainty what a jury will do is usually not being completely honest. A jury is made up of a group of people—in the State of Arizona on a personal injury case usually eight people—who are randomly assembled. All juries do not agree. They are made up of different people. Which people end up on that jury is unknown until the moment trial begins. Therefore, nobody knows with certainty what a jury will do. But an experienced personal injury lawyer is able to gauge, based upon past experience and what other jury verdicts have been in similar cases, what type of verdict would be expected.
Therefore, deciding whether to settle the case is not trying to determine what is "fair" but instead trying to determine what is the jury likely to do. Here is where a personal injury lawyer offers a great deal of value to somebody who is deciding what to do. The personal injury lawyer is best able to weigh out the different factors in every given case and compare them to what juries may do. Something that may seem very unimportant to the person who is hurt or the person who caused the accident may be well known by personal injury lawyers to be very important to the average jury.
Therefore, in deciding whether to settle a case the question is not to just to simply search out what you think the "right" result would be. Instead, it is usually a matter of finding somebody with knowledge and expertise as to what personal injury verdicts have been for similar cases with similar factors and, using that as a measuring stick, determining whether or not the case should be settled or whether it is better to move forward and try to allow the jury to get a final verdict as to what the case is worth.
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