How Lawyers Can Help Maximize Your Settlement for Fractured Sternum in Car Crash

A fractured sternum occurs when the breastbone is broken, often from the force of a seatbelt, airbag, or direct chest impact in a car crash. While some assume it’s a minor injury, the reality is far more serious. Victims may face breathing difficulties, cardiovascular strain, and lasting discomfort. 

The fractured sternum's long-term effects can complicate recovery and add significant financial stress. For these reasons, legal representation is often necessary to ensure a settlement that reflects current and future needs.

Here is how they can help maximize your settlement:

Understanding the Complete Value of Your Injury

When determining what to add for a fractured sternum, an insurance adjuster will not just look at the emergency room bill. There will likely be additional expenses in medical costs, such as diagnostic imaging, cost of hospital stay, cost of follow-up visit, cost of physical therapy, or rehabilitation. 

An injury victim may be without work or unable to return to their job in the same capacity they did before. Other non-economic losses involve pain, suffering, motion, and mobility. 

An experienced car accident lawyer will determine and add everything to the demand letter, so you can correctly weigh economic vs. non-economic loss. By categorizing every loss, attorneys seek to prevent the insurance companies from undervaluing a serious injury to the chest.

Gathering Evidence to Support Your Injury Claim

One thing that an insurance adjuster wants to see is documentation supporting the extent of the fractured sternum. Showing the health care providers involved creates a necessity to accept that your fractured sternum was an actual injury. Injury evidence can be made up of your medical file, including X-ray of the fractured sternum, a CT scan, physician notes documenting the extent of your injury, etc. 

Accident reports and eyewitness testimony describe how the crash happened. Financial documents quantify lost income or diminished earning potential. Lawyers often meet with medical specialists to describe how a fractured sternum can affect lung function and heart health in the future. 

Vocational specialists also add value by describing any long-term employment issues from a severe chest injury. All of this will demonstrate the injury’s impact. Proper record-keeping ensures that insurers and juries understand how severe the injury is and its future impact.

Negotiating With Insurance Companies

Insurance companies want to settle quickly, cheaply, and at less than the injury's actual value, which they typically accomplish by minimizing the severity of chest injuries. They might argue that recovery is a simple process or that long-term treatment is unnecessary. The attorney must use excellent negotiation skills to refute those claims. 

In negotiating, the attorney wants to use various tools available, such as the medical record, medical and vocational expert reports, and even case law, to compose a complete valuation that refutes undervaluation from the beginning to the end. 

Timing strategies can also increase your value. For example, an attorney waits until all medical evaluations are complete. According to the Insurance Research Council, injury victims with legal representation recover about three times as much as those without representation. 

With a lawyer's help, individuals have an extra safeguard against lowball offers and have a greater chance of receiving a fair settlement.

Litigation as a Path to Maximizing Compensation 

If negotiations break down, filing a lawsuit may be the only option for obtaining fair compensation. Litigation includes discovery (exchange of relevant documentary evidence), depositions (where one attorney questions an expert), and sworn testimony from experts who can explain complex medical issues to a jury. 

It typically results in additional and different types of evidence that ultimately strengthen the case. If negotiations are unsuccessful, a written case presented to a jury should clearly explain the medical complications and long-term impact the injuries had on the plaintiff's health. 

Suppose the plaintiff has a lawyer with trial experience. In that case, an attorney adds value to the case that either makes the difference in an inadequate settlement or a settlement that accurately reflects the actual cost of having fractured a sternum.

Key Points

• Sternum fractures are serious. They often delay or prohibit future and costly complications.

• Lawyers calculate the ultimate value. Medical bills, lost wages, pain, effects on health, etc.

• Strong evidence matters. Incorporating medical documentation and expert evidence makes a claim stronger.

• Insurers undervalue cases. Negotiation experience matters to avoiding undervaluations throughout the claims process.

• Litigation to obtain a fair settlement is sometimes necessary. Taking a claim to court can be the only option to receive maximum compensation.

• Settle future medical costs. Structured products generally can assure sufficient financial representation in the future.