Delaware Business Lawyer Blog

If you ever get involved in a car accident lawsuit, sooner or later your attorney will let you know that the defense lawyer has scheduled you for an "IME." Insurance companies and defense lawyers refer to this as an "independent" medical examination. In reality, there's nothing independent about it. The doctor who will be examining you is far from independent, He makes a substantial income from insurance companies by examining injured plaintiffs and writing reports that are used to minimize the extent of the injuries or deny their existence.

The written reports of these examinations, which I call defense medical examinations ("DME"), can be successfully challenged by an experienced plaintiff's lawyer. This challenge starts before the examination takes place. The plaintiff's lawyer should meet with the plaintiff before the date of the examination in order to explain what to expect.

This experience will not be like the exmainations you've had in the past where you're seen by a doctor who takes care of you. This examiantion is usually done very quickly. For this reason, it's helpful if you could write down a few things about your experience that you can share with your attorney. Included in your notes should be:

1.What time did you arrive at the doctor’s office?
2.What time were you taken into the examination room?
3.What time did the doctor came into the room?
4.What time did the actual examination start?
5.What time did the examination end?

Interestingly, most of these DME doctors will not allow an injured plaintiff to bring a tape recorder into the examination so that there will be an accurate record of what was said and done. I wonder why?

In Delaware car accident cases, photos that show minor damage to the injured party’s car cannot be used to persuade a Delaware jury that the injuries must also have been minimal. The reason for this rule is that it’s well known by experts that there is not necessarily a correlation between the damage to a car and the extent of the injuries sustained by an occupant of that car.

If you think about it for a moment, the rules make perfect sense. Anyone who buys a carton of eggs will tell you that even if the carton looks perfect, they never buy the eggs unless they open it up to see whether any of the eggs are broken.

The fact is that you can have a crash where the car is badly smashed up and the people inside get out and walk away without any injuries. In the same way that photos of that car should not be used to prove serious injury, photos from a fender bender should not be used to prove little or no injuries.

A Delaware lawyer I know recently asked for advice on what he should tell his client, the father of a young driver. It seems that the father contacted the lawyer because his car insurance premiums were extremely high due to his son being the regular driver of one of the cars owned by the father. Specifically, the father wanted to know whether it made sense to reduce the insurance coverage on the car to the minimum limits, and thereby lower the cost of the insurance.

What the father didn't realize, and what I told the lawyer who asked, is that by lowering the coverage to the minimum limits, he would be putting his son at great risk.

Say, for example, that the son is an an accident caused by the neligence of another driver. Let's also assume that trhe other driver also had minimum limits. This means that the most the son could get from the other driver's insurance company is $15,000 (the minimum coverage). But what if the son is seriously injured? What if his injuries prevent him from working a full-time job for the rest of his life. Who is going to make up for this financial loss? Well, if the father reduces the coverage on the car his son drives to $15,000, the answer is that nobody will provide money to the son for his future losses.

Had the father maintained liability coverage of $100,000, or better yet, $300,000, and got the same coverage in case the other driver is underinsured, the father's insurance company would have to pay the son for his losses, up to the amount of coverage.

The lesson to be learned is while you're considering lowering your coverage in case you injure someone else, remember that you are also, in effect, lowering your own coverage in case you get injured by another person who is driving around with the same coverage that you have.

A video that recently went viral shows a young woman texting while walking in a mall in Reading, PA. She’s so distracted that she falls into a fountain. Most people who see this video think it’s funny. But there’s nothing funny about the consequences of putting oneself or others in danger.

On January 25, the NY Times reported on the latest concerns about pedestrians who are distracted by iPods and cell phones while crossing the street. Some states are considering legislation that would restrict the use of cell phones and iPods while running or walking along the sidewalk or street. Regardless of how we feel about distracted walking or running, as a Delaware attorney I hope we all recognize how dangerous it can be to drive while you’re distracted. An Illinois Court recently awarded $8 million to the parents of 2 teenage girls who were killed in a head-on car crash involving a state trooper. The evidence showed that the cop was speeding at 126 miles per hour, talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend, and sending emails on his in-dash computer.

There’s a whole lot of information out there about this topic. Here are some links:
U.S. Department of Transportation
OSHA’s website has a section dedicated to distracted driving
Governors’ Highway Safety Association
Oprah has started a no texting while driving campaign

Lawsuits against Toyota are springing up all around the country. The most well know cases are for injuries or death caused by sudden acceleration or problems with the brakes. But there are others kinds of lawsuits being filed against Toyota.

Many owners have gone to Court claiming that Toyota’s massive recalls have caused the value of their cars to drop. These owners say that Toyota knew about the safety problems and kept these problems hidden from buyers. In addition, shareholders of Toyota are suing because the value of their shares has plummeted.

Other lawsuits are being brought by Toyota owners who are afraid to drive dangerous cars and who claim that their insurance premiums are going to increase.

If you own a Toyota and want to know more about your rights, contact an experienced Delaware lawyer.

Lately this Delaware automobile accident lawyer has been giving a lot of thought to preventable injuries and fatalities. A recent article in the News Journal shows the consequences of driving without regard for the safety of others.

The driver of a truck was high on drugs and was speeding when he crashed into another vehicle being driven by father of 2 children. Both vehicles went off the road and overturned.

Making matters far worse than they might have been, nobody in either vehicle was wearing a seat belt.

Now, we have 2 families who are horribly affected. One man is in prison, and the other man is dead.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Delaware automobile accident caused by an aggressive driver, contact the law offices of attorney Charles Snyderman and find out all about your rights and remedies.

As a Delaware car accident lawyer, I am constantly fighting with insurance companies for my clients who have received soft tissue injuries in an accident. The purpose of this article is to explain what soft tissue injuries are, and how they occur.

Soft tissues include ligaments, tendons, muscles and nerves.

Ligaments are tough bands of tissue that connect two bones together to form a joint. Their purpose is to stabilize the joint and control its range of motion by allowing movement in only certain directions so as to prevent dislocation.

Tendons are cords that come from the end of a muscle and insert into a bond. When your muscle contracts, it pulls on the bone and allows parts of our body to move.

Muscles are tissues which have the ability to contract, and so they act as motors to move a joint.

Picture a rubber band. If you stretch it, it expands. When you let go, it snaps back to the way it was originally. But what happens when you use to much force to stretch the rubber band? It doesn’t return to its original shape. That’s what happens when you over stretch a ligament or a tendon.

We’ve all heard the term “whiplash.” Despite how this word is often used, whiplash is not an injury. Instead, it explains the mechanism of the injury when the head and the neck are taken beyond the range that God intended them to go through.

Let’s take a look at a neck injury caused by a rear end car accident. Upon impact from the rear, the car is propelled forward and the body and the shoulders are driven out from under the head. The head stays still based on the law of inertia that says when an object is still it tends to remain still. As the body and shoulders are pushed forward, and the head stays still, the head snaps backwards, severely stressing the neck. As the car abruptly comes to a stop either from hitting the car in front or from the driver braking, the head recoils forward because of the momentum of the stopping car. This movement causes the ligaments and muscles to become torn and strained, and this causes hemorrhages. This eventually heals with scar tissue which is not as elastic as a normal muscle, and this in turn causes your brain to tell you you’re in pain.

As a Delaware car accident attorney, one of the battles I have to fight for a lot of my clients who suffer a sprain and strain of their neck (cervical strain & sprain) or back (lumbar strain & sprain) has to do with the way insurance companies try to minimize the consequences of what they call a “soft tissue injury.” One of the things they say is that these injuries don’t show up on an MRI or a CT Scan. It’s as if they’re saying if you can’t see the injury, it doesn’t exist. In other words, they’re calling you a liar.

Next thing they do is send you to a doctor who they choose for what they call an “independent” medical examination. They affectionately refer to this as an “IME.” Well, they’re not independent at all. They’re conducted by a doctor who gets paid a lot of money to see you for less than 30 minutes. He disagrees with your doctor about the nature of your injury and the treatment you’ve been receiving. (I have to admit that every once in a while, if you’re lucky, you’ll be seen by an ethical doctor who won’t try to distort the truth).

How do these doctors distort the truth? For one thing, they say that after examining you, there are no objective findings to support your complaints of pain. Once again, if they can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. When I get to question these doctors, I take the deposition of these doctors, they have to admit the following:
(1) They’ve been practicing since the days before we had MRIs.
(2) Before we had MRIs, they provided medical treatment to patients who had complaints of pain even though nothing showed up on an X-Ray or a CT Scan.
(3) For their own patients, they provided treatment based on their subjective complaints.
(4) They agree that now that we have MRIs, we can actually see some of these injuries that we couldn’t see before.
(5) Some day, when medicine catches up, we’ll have machines that will allow the doctor to see injuries that don’t even show up on MRIs.

So basically, their report that my client has subjective complaints is true, but the conclusion they reach from that is not true. It’s like the hubble telescope. When the scientists turned it on, they saw planets and stars they’ve never seen before. These astronomical bodies didn’t just happen to come into existence the moment the telescope was turned on. They have always been there - we just couldn’t see them.

As a Delaware personal injury lawyer who handles car accident cases, I always tell my clients that the number 1 rule is to tell the truth. Sometimes, telling the truth is not enough if your medical records don't support what you're saying. Here's a typical example of what happens

On 12/16/09, actress Anne Hathaway was in a minor traffic accident in Los Angeles. Newspaper accounts of the accident say that she was not injured. It would be interesting to talk to her a week after the accident to see how she’s doing. Why? because it's not unusual to be in a car accident and think you’re okay. You tell the cops that you aren’t injured, and you refuse medical treatment. That night, the next day, or even a few days later, you begin to feel pain or soreness. You think to yourself that it’s normal to feel some pain - after all, you were just in an accident. You go about your normal routine. If you’re lucky, the pain goes away completely. In some cases, however, the pain lingers. Once again, you assume that it’s only a minor injury and that you’ll return to normal in the near future.

You continue to hurt, you complain about the pain to your spouse, and you still don’t see a doctor. After a few months, you finally realize that this isn’t going away, and you reluctantly call your doctor’s office to schedule an appointment. After the medical exam, the doctor tells you that you have cervical (neck) and lumbar (back) strain and sprain, and that you need physical therapy and drugs.

At some point you think about making a claim for your injuries, and you contact the other driver’s insurance company. The claims representative takes your statement over the phone, gets your medical records, and tells you that you waited such a long time to see your doctor that it appears the pain you’re complaining about is not related to the accident.

So what should you have done? As soon as you start to feel symptoms of pain or soreness, get checked out by your doctor. There’s no harm in playing it safe. Your own car insurance company will pay for the visit. If it turns out that your doctor says “take 2 aspirins and call me in the morning,” consider yourself very fortunate that you weren’t injured and you don’t have a personal injury claim. On the other hand, if your doctor prescribes pain killers and muscle relaxants, or prescribes physical therapy, you’ve helped your personal injury claim because you got medical attention early on and your medical records will relate the symptoms to the accident.

It’s great to be stoic and put off seeing a doctor following an accident. Unfortunately, this way of dealing with things could come back to haunt you later on when the insurance company accuses you of being dishonest.