Maryland Injury and Disability Law : Washington DC Metro Injury & Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Greenberg & Bederman : Accidents, Falls, Medical Malpractice : Maryland, DC, Virginia

While this might be a great thing for the insurance companies, it most assuredly isn’t a positive development for accident victims.

According to the website, the purpose of Colossus is to:

“…interpret medical reports and look up definitions of injuries, treatments, complications and permanent impairments using AMA 5th edition data. Through a series of interactive questions, Colossus guides the adjuster through an objective evaluation of medical treatment options, degree of pain and suffering, degree of permanent impairment to the claimant’s body, and the impact of the injury on the claimant’s lifestyle.”

What this means is that Colossus uses data from the American Medical Association to lump your injury into a specific injury category, whether that category is accurate to your circumstances or not. As far as Colossus is concerned, a broken leg is a broken leg, no matter if the victim is an office worker or a construction worker or a fire fighter.  Obviously, no two injuries are exactly the same. There is no such thing as an “average” broken leg, or an “average” rib fracture, or an “average” head injury.  Lumping them all together as if they were identical is disingenuous at best.

Another problem is that Colossus uses pricing data to determine exactly how much your injury should cost, regardless of how much it actually costs. For instance, if you receive a broken leg in an accident, Colossus determines the amount of money that an average broken leg settlement costs in your state, and that is the amount of money that is put towards your settlement. Where they happen to be getting this pricing data is anyone’s guess, as many insurers who use Colossus consider that information a “trade secret,” and have even taken former employees to court over allowing that information to be made public. 

Aside from all of these serious shortcomings, there are two aspects of this software that we find even more disturbing. The first is that Colossus makes no allowances for physical pain and suffering or emotional damage. The pain that your injury caused you or the possible detrimental mental effects of the accident is, as far as Colossus is concerned, worth absolutely nothing.

The second shortcoming goes back to the idea of simply automating injury claims. As we mentioned earlier, insurance adjusters used to be experienced human beings who could hear arguments from injury victims and could be made to see reason. Now, insurance adjusters are shackled to the results that are given to them by a computer program, which often leads many injury victims with the choice of either accepting an artificially low settlement or taking their case to court.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have spent the past few decades fighting for fair treatment for injury victims in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. A significant part of that process is helping those who have been hurt due to no fault of their own get past the disingenuous practices of insurance companies, including the use of software that automatically stacks the deck against the injured.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident anywhere in the D.C. metropolitan area, contact the law offices of Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

If you want to learn more about personal injury please read our personal injury page.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, please read about Andrew Bederman, Roger Greenberg, or Jason Fernandez or contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free case review.