People like to joke about the woman who sued because she spilled hot coffee on her lap while driving. The notorious coffee-spiller quickly became a punchline around the world.
What most people don’t know — the plaintiff suffered horrible third-degree burns and required multiple surgeries to repair her burned skin. There’s a reason she received one of the largest personal injury settlements in American lore.
Not so funny after all.
The best personal injury lawyers can help American citizens injured during an accident recover the damages they deserve. Companies also pay personal injury settlements to customers hurt by one of their products or services. Of course, for many people, that’s a poor replacement for the quality of life they enjoyed before a painful injury. Especially if you end up as a talk show punchline.
So what are the most frequent causes of personal injury settlements?
Read The Safety Instructions
Of all personal injury lawsuits, product liability cases have the second-highest average damages. Consumers who successfully sue following a product liability accident win on overage $300,000 in court. In 2006, more than 220,000 people were injured by toys alone (or so they said). That’s up from 147,000 a decade before.
Ask Your Doctor…
So what’s the highest-median damage awards in personal injury cases? Medical malpractice far and away has the highest damages, at $600,000 per case.
Keep Your Eyes On The Road
There were more than 54 million traffic lawsuits filed last year alone; that’s more than twice the number of criminal cases, which averages around 20 million every year. sadly, it’s not much safer outside the car either. Nearly one pedestrian is struck in America every seven minutes.
Car accident lawyers usually don’t lack for clients.
All told, the medical expenses, cost to employers, lost wages, and property damage from all types of accidents cost U.S. citizens and companies almost $270 billion in 2013. If you’ve ever wondered why the United States has a reputation as such a lawsuit-happy nation, it’s because there’s literally billions of dollars at stake.
