Parallel Realities: Most People and the Injured Person

I wrote before about an injury in late middle age potentially being career-ending even if it isn't "catastrophic" in the traditional sense.

I think I wrote about this because my cohort is in late middle age and I see it happen so frequently.

Vocational counselors explain that in most cases it doesn't make sense for someone who's 60 to retrain for work in a new industry.

It's going to take most of the "work life" they have left to get up to speed and the new career is going to be over before it really gets started. (Kind of like medical schools not accepting applicants in their 40s.)

But some outliers have a drive that prevents them from accepting that they can't work any more and end up back in the workforce despite the odds.

Here's what I wrote to one of them recently:

There are two realities in personal injury cases.

One reality is what happens for most people. That's the reference point we use when we're handling claims because we don't know what the future will hold. (A good example is life expectancy. We use averages. The life expectancy derived from the OIC's table isn't how long you will live. It's how long the average person your age and gender will live.) If we waited for what actually will happen to each individual claims would drag on for decades.

The other reality is what happens to you. This is a career-ending injury for most people with your experience and skill set. But it doesn't have to be career-ending for you. Maybe you have a network of people who can help you find work that leverages your skills and experience but doesn't activate your symptoms or put you at-risk of getting re-injured because of collision-related limitations.

This begs a very important question: Should damages be awarded based on what happens to most people or what happens to the injured person?

This comes up all the time in terms of the injury itself. The defense will say that most people get better in X weeks. We argue that our client isn’t “most people” and the reality is that she’s still having symptoms years after the collision.

In that situation—where we actually know what has happened—we should use that information versus what happens to most people.

But that’s dealing with the past. When we’re dealing with the future, and we don’t know what will happen, I think we need to toggle to what will happen to most people (unless there’s really compelling evidence that someone is an outlier).

#damages

#past

#future

#life expectancy

#expectancy

#most

#some