The average whiplash settlement in Arizona car accidents ranges from $2,000 to $25,000, and can vary considerably. In serious cases involving more severe whiplash injuries, your settlement may be much more.
The settlement value of a whiplash personal injury claim depends on factors including the severity of the injury, your medical treatment needs, lost wages and lost earning capacity, and intangibles like pain and suffering.
Stone Rose Law represents clients in settlement negotiations and litigation in Arizona, including people who have suffered whiplash injuries as a result of the negligent or intentional acts of others. This blog post covers the considerations that go into negotiating a settlement for whiplash injury and how legal representation can help you receive proper whiplash compensation.
If you have received a whiplash injury, call Stone Rose Law at (480) 631-3025 to speak with an experienced personal injury attorney.
Whiplash is caused by your head being suddenly and forcefully thrown forward and backward or from side to side. Whiplash is a form of muscle strain not visible to the naked eye.\
Symptoms of whiplash vary depending on the severity of the injury. They may appear immediately after the incident or develop over a few days. Common whiplash symptoms include:
Medical professionals have created a system to rank the severity of whiplash injuries and symptoms based on a grading scale that can be from Grade 0 to 4 or Grade 1 to 5. In this article we use the latter scaling method:
Whiplash symptoms can also vary from one person to another, and can be difficult to prove. A severe whiplash injury will often come with more symptoms and will affect you for a longer time. Chronic pain is often associated with severe injuries.
Age also plays a significant factor in whiplash injuries. Younger whiplash victims are generally awarded higher compensation than older drivers or passengers despite suffering less severe injuries. If a victim experienced a whiplash injury in the past, they will more likely experience severe damage when subjected to similar conditions, which will also influence settlement amounts.
Whiplash injuries can also cause spinal cord problems if sudden compression occurs in your neck. They can also aggravate other pre-existing conditions you may have.
Most whiplash lawsuit claims in Arizona settle out of court. The process of claim settlement involves multiple steps.
Before settlement negotiations begin, there are steps you can and should take to lay the foundation for a whiplash settlement.
Even if you don’t feel any symptoms after an accident, you should still see a doctor as soon as you can to assess if you have experienced any soft tissue injury to your neck and spine. If you delay in doing this, an insurance company adjuster may claim that your injuries were not serious because you did not seek immediate medical attention. They could use that to justify a claim denial or a low settlement offer.
The medical records of your diagnosis and symptoms, along with your medical bills, will be of vital importance to begin establishing your injury, out-of-pocket costs, lost wages, and possible future medical expenses.
It is always advisable to contact law enforcement to report an accident to document that the accident happened and name(s) of the parties involved. If the accident results in injury or death Arizona law requires that you contact law enforcement and report it. The related police report can help support the facts of your car accident claim.
You should also report the accident to your insurance company and the other driver’s insurance.
Fair settlement claims depends on evidence. Since whiplash injuries can be hard to prove, insurance companies often do not treat them as being legitimate injuries and can seek to deny related claims or offer low settlement payouts on them. If you cannot prove the incident that led to your whiplash injury and how its symptoms have harmed you, you will have trouble convincing an insurance company adjuster to take your claim seriously.
Accordingly, the first step in settlement is to assemble evidence supporting the existence of your whiplash symptoms and injuries. This should include all medical records, including treatment plans and prescribed medications.
In addition, it is a good idea to keep a daily journal detailing the specific circumstances of the accident and the date, time, and severity of your symptoms and injury(ies).
The insurance claim adjuster you deal with may already be inclined not to settle with you. These adjusters are experienced, tough negotiators, even when they do settle.
They can use a variety of tactics to get you to harm your own case by taking a recorded statement from you that they then use against you, or offering you a low-ball initial offer while promising to fight your claim if you do not accept it.
If you have to deal with a defense attorney as well as a claim adjuster, your negotiation challenges can be even greater.
Hiring an experienced personal injury attorney as soon as possible after the accident runs parallel with gathering evidence. Your attorney can be instrumental in helping you identify and collect the evidence you will need so you are not taken advantage of in settlement negotiations.
Parallel with the evidence-gathering process will be the process of identifying the kinds of whiplash-related harm you can attribute to your claim in settlement negotiations. The evidence will help your attorney establish the severity of your whiplash injury and the economic and non-economic damages upon which to base the settlement value of your claim.
The severity of your injury will affect the value of your settlement.
Minor whiplash injuries, like Grade 1 or Grade 2 whiplash, will in most cases have a lower settlement value than a Grade 4 or Grade 5 injury.
Recovery time can vary, with longer recovery possibly justifying higher compensation. Severe cases may require extensive medical treatment and can significantly impact your ability to work and your quality of life.
If you have a pre-existing neck or spinal cord injury, whiplash may aggravate it. It is possible that an insurance company adjuster will try to claim that your symptoms are mostly or entirely the result of the pre-existing injury, so having an experienced personal injury attorney will be helpful in dealing with this tactic.
Economic damages are financial losses you suffer because of an accident that you can prove with bills, receipts, or other records of how much they cost you. Economic damages can include:
In contrast to economic damages, non-economic damages are more difficult to calculate but still have a value that should be included in a settlement. Non-economic damages reflect the negative impact on your life that your whiplash injury has.
Examples can include:
Calculating pain and suffering in settlement negotiations often involves the use of the multiplier method. This starts with the sum of your economic damages and then multiplies it by a number that corresponds to the severity of the pain and suffering endured.
Once your whiplash attorney can establish the base settlement value of your whiplash injury, two additional considerations can come into play that can influence that base value: insurance policy limits and possible comparative negligence claims asserted against you by the other driver.
Most whiplash settlement payouts come from insurance policy coverage. The policy limits of the insurance company you are negotiating with can affect how much you may be able to recover in settlement.
Some drivers may be uninsured. Drivers who carry only minimum insurance may not have enough coverage to pay the full cost of your whiplash claim, upon which you would have to resort to under insured motorist coverage from your car insurance company, provided you carry that coverage. If the other driver does not have insurance coverage in a motor vehicle accident, you may need to resort to uninsured motorist coverage from your own insurance provider, provided you carry that coverage.
In Arizona, the legal doctrine of comparative negligence means that if the defendant can prove that you contributed to the accident that caused your injury, your compensation recovery can be reduced proportionately to your degree of fault.
For example, let’s say you were involved in a motor vehicle accident that leads to a whiplash injury. The other driver was mostly at fault for speeding, but argues in defense that you were talking on the phone at the time of the accident and were distracted. In settlement negotiations, the other driver’s insurance company may claim that you were 25% contributorily negligent and try to bargain down your compensation payout by the same percentage, similarly to how a judgment award in court would be reduced.
Gathering sufficient evidence and overcoming the predisposition of many insurance companies to treat your claim as not being serious is essential to receiving the maximum compensation you desire. You may also need to defend yourself against claims of comparative negligence.
An experienced whiplash injury attorney can also ensure that your case is properly prepared to go to trial if necessary, including filing your claim within the Arizona statute of limitations for personal injury claims.
Your personal injury lawyer can also help identify any possible third parties who may be liable to you and engage them in settlement negotiations.
A Stone Rose Law personal injury attorney can guide you and represent you throughout the whiplash settlement process, from evidence gathering through negotiations and maximizing your insurance settlement payout.
To speak with one of our Arizona personal injury law specialists, call us at (480) 631-3025 or use our contact form to schedule a free case evaluation.
