Jury Ruling Trends

If you were in a automobile accident and sustained a soft tissue injury, you're in for a fight to collect a fair and just settlement award. The following article from the Dallas Morning News on May 8, 2000 talks about jury awards and how the awards are shrinking in dollar size. 

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Soft Tissue Injury Awards

Juries are especially skeptical these days about auto accident suits which primarily involve internal strains and bruises, called "soft tissue injuries," rather than broken bones and major wounds, says Bill Liebe, president of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association. "This isn't a situation involving money for pain and suffering or emotional distress. These verdicts don't pay for the doctor bills," he says In more than 40 soft tissue injury cases over that last three years, Dallas County juries awarded the winning plaintiffs less than their medical bills or lost wages, a review by The News shows.

In every one, juries found defendants 100 percent at fault, most admitted liability and licensed medical providers testified to the injuries and cost. In one of those suits, juror Michael Hall listened as a defendant admitted that his car rear-ended the plaintiffs car at a traffic light and as a chiropractor testified to the injuries. 

There was hardly a scratch on the car and the plaintiffs lawyer couldn't show us a single X-ray or pictures of bruises," say Mr. Hall. The jury found in favor of the plaintiff but voted to pay him only half his medical expenses. Mr. Hall say he felt even that was too much money. " I thought he was just trying t get free money from barely being hurt," he says.

Isaac Okah had always heard that juries in Texas and across the country would award big money in just about any lawsuit. Now he knows better. In April 1999, the Dallas resident went to court for the first item in his life, seeking $12,486.00 to pay doctor bills from a traffic accident two years earlier. The other driver admitted responsibility after her Lincoln rear-ended his compact car. Witnesses and police also said Mr. Okah wasn't to blame and after hearing the evidence, trail jurors agreed. They found the other driver"100 percent negligent," in effect handing Mr. Okah a total victory. Except for one thing: they awarded him $1,426.00 not enough to cover even one of the 3 MRI's scans of his back and neck that doctors had performed during his nine months of treatment. "I was shocked," says the 40 year old accountant. " I wasn't asking for a lot of money, just enough to pay my medical bills."

Mr. Okah encountered what many legal scholars, judges and practicing trail lawyers says is the new courtroom reality: the free-wheeling, or " out of control," jury -- always a rarity -- is a vanishing species. 

People didn't like the McDonald's verdict because everybody knows hot coffee is hot and can burn you," says Mr. Schwartz, who is also a law professor at University of Cincinnati School of Law. "Wacky jury verdicts like this case have resulted in more damage than good," he says.  

Cases like that of Mr. Okah, whose car was rear-ended on the highway, are more typical.

For his jurors, the issue wasn't who caused the wreck but whether all of the expenses incurred afterward were justified.

"We just didn't think he was as badly hurt as he claimed and we didn't think he needed all that medical treatment," say Ernest Walt, senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Mesquite, who sat on the panel.

So they gave him little more than a 10th of the amount he sought --- much less than the $4500 offer from the other driver's insurance company that Mr. Okah had rejected before trial.

The entire $1,400 jury award has gone toward trial costs, Mr. Okah's lawyer says. They say he got none of it nor did they or his doctors. The medical providers threatened to hire bill collectors but apparently haven't' yet, the lawyer say.