Jackpot Settlement
What would you do if you got a check in the mail for $1 million?
We don’t mean one of those Nigerian Prince scams or one of those fake checks that turns out to be nothing more than a solicitation for one charity or another. We mean a real, genuine, and honest to goodness check worth $1 million.
Let us further suppose that there was some fine print with the check, which stated that if you cashed in that $1 million, you would be contractually obligated to seek no other form of income for the rest of your life. All of a sudden, cashing that check doesn’t seem like such a good idea, does it?
$1 million is certainly a lot of money, but if that’s about all the money you are going to get for the rest of your life, it isn’t very much at all. For many people who have been severely injured in states where there are so-called “caps” on non-economic damages, this scenario is not hypothetical at all. If a person is severely injured and needs constant care, a $1 million settlement likely won’t cover the costs for that. This problem is compounded if the injury victim happens to be young.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel recently had an article about just such an injury victim. A woman named Shauna Heath suffered a severe spinal injury when she was only 16 years old, and has since been unable to walk or feed herself. She is now in her mid-thirties. Her injury was caused by a defective seat belt, and she received a multi-million dollar settlement from the company that manufactured the car. But despite that settlement, she still is unable to afford to hire a full time nurse. When you have an injury that requires full time care, even multi-million dollar settlements have a tendency to dwindle fast.
There is the initial treatment, which is certainly expensive enough. Then there is the ongoing care and medication, and there are certainly going to be plenty of things that insurance companies will refuse to pay for. Even people who suffer from minor injuries or illnesses will have to deal with claim denial. And in the case of Ms. Heath, who received the injury in her teens and can still expect to live for quite some time, the constant needs of her condition will completely eclipse the settlement that she received, if they haven’t done so already.
The overall premise of the article in the News-Sentinel is that even though Ms. Heath received a multi-million dollar settlement, she is still struggling to make ends meet. Tort reform organizations like to refer to multi-million dollar settlements like Ms. Heath’s as “jackpot justice” or “winning the lawsuit lottery,” but from our perspective (and certainly Ms. Heath’s,) it doesn’t seem like she could consider herself a “winner” of much of anything. What she received for her injuries was enough to cover some of her medical issues, but certainly not all of them, and this will last only as long as the money from the settlement does. There are no mansions, sports cars or trips to Bermuda in the equation here.
Also mentioned in the article is a piece of legislation that passed the State Judiciary Committee in Tennessee last week:
“Last week the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill proposed by Gov. Bill Haslam that would cap damages at $1 million in cases involving serious spinal cord injuries, severe burns or the death of a parent of minor children.”
If Ms. Heath is barely able to keep her head above water after a multi-million dollar settlement, how do you think those who have suffered severe spinal cord injuries are going to do on $1 million or less? You can also consider that many settlements don’t come all at once. They come in payments often spread out over ten or twenty years. If it’s a million dollars spread out over twenty years, that’s $50,000 a year before taxes, and significantly less after. This would be manageable if you happen to be a healthy person, but what if you happen to be confined to a wheelchair and are in a more or less constant precarious state of health? How does your financial picture look now?
For that matter, how do you think things are going for injury victims who live in states where the damage cap is $250,000? How do you think those “justice jackpot winners” are able to pay for their needed care with $250,000? We would guess that they aren’t doing so well.
On the other side of the coin, all of those insurance companies that benefit from damage caps are doing quite well. So what we are seeing put into place all over the country is help for those who don’t need it and punishment for those who do need it. To us, that makes absolutely no sense at all.
Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people who have been injured due to no fault of their own. This includes people who have been injured in car accidents, injuries due to medical malpractice or surgical errors, pedestrian and bicycle accidents and injuries on public transit. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the negligence of others, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.
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