Landau Injury Law

Not necessarily.  If you have your own auto coverage, or are covered under another member of your household’s policy, you may have “UNinsured Motorist” coverage.  This type of insurance is generally mandatory for Virginia drivers.  This insurance may enable you to collect against your own insurance policy.  Your insurance company can then go against the negligent Defendant to try and recover its money in a “subrogation action.”  SO, just because you may have been hit and injured by a deadbeat with no insurance, do not dispair, there may still be other coverage available to help you and your family to recover from your injuries.  At ABRAMS LANDAU, Ltd., we review our own clients’ insurance contracts in order to find coverages and protections that can assist them after a car crash.

In order to gauge the likely value of a case, the ABRAMS LANDAU team looks at a number of things, whether the client is involved in a car wreck, bicycle crash, slip and fall, dog attack or are injured due to a defective product, dangerous premises or other negligent conduct.  One of the best indicators is looking at jury verdict, mediation, arbitration and settlement amounts from similar cases in the same or similar jurisdictions.  This often requires Herndon Reston area injury lawyer Doug Landau use computer research.  Lauren Holtzman, shown here, utilizes the expensive Lexis-Nexus programs the firm pays for as well as other state, local and national sources.  We also look at our own, internal data in order to narrow the range of expected jury verdicts.  We also look at collectibility and assets in order to determine whether, once we win, we can economically collect compensation for our deserving clients.  

The trial team at ABRAMS LANDAU, Ltd. get calls from all over the country from victims of negligence, assaults and permanent injuries.  We are often asked (or told) “there’s a formula to these cases, isn’t there ?”When a brain-injured client’s parent tells me, “My neighbor’s friend’s dentist said that you just multiply the medical bills times three and that’s what you get for settlement” it is hard to explain that this has no basis in reality.  If this was true, then the woman I represented who slipped, fell and then lost her ability to have children would not have been able to seek more than just her Emergency Room bills.  If there was a formula of “three times specials,” then my younger clients, who miss time from school, would not get fair compensation.   A homemaker or person who could not get medical care (i.e., no CT Scans, x-rays, heavy pain medications) because they are pregnant, would be treated unfairly.  And those people who seek out unethical lawyers and over treat or go to unscrupulous doctors, would be unjustly enriched.  So, there is no “magic formula.”  It would not work in the majority of our cases, and we do not apply it in setting our demands, amounts sought in court or accepted in settlement.  At our Herndon injury law shop, we try to help people with all kinds of injuries, losses and cases.  Every case is unique and special.   See tomorrow’s post for more information on how Doug Landau and the ABRAMS LANDAU team evaluates injury, disease and disability cases.

In an earlier entry, I wrote about how we settled a case for a Radford area client after filing suit in his premises liability case in the Loudoun Circuit Court.   In this entry, you’re never going to believe it, but I brought a check for over $25,000 to the workers comp defense counsel. That’s right, in a workers comp claim where there is a third party negligence case, the employer’s insurance company has an “IOU” against any settlement, verdict or other monetary recovery.  In other words, if you are hurt on the job, and you sue someone who DOES NOT WORK FOR YOUR EMPLOYER for their negligence, or because of a defective product, or because their premises was dangerous, or their dog attacked you, the insurance company for your employer will look to get their money back.  Sometimes, BOTH cases can be settled at the same time. (more…)

It’s never a good idea to stop during a sprint triathlon, that is, if you want a top finish !

Today I stopped not once, but three times !  I stopped in the cold, pool swim, in order to get my “electronics” (watch, “time window” goggle chronograph and heart rate monitor) working.  And then I had to stop on the bike ride twice.  My rear wheel was rubbing against the frame.  I could hear, feel and smell the burning rubber.  It was not safe.  And it’s better to be safe than sorry.  Especially when you represent injured athletes and bicyclists who have been in crashes.  Had I kept going, my wheel could have worn out or overheated and burst, causing me to crash, suffer a head impact or worse, a brain injury.  Averaging some 24 miles per hour, I try to not take unnecessary chances. There was a screw loose (many of you are cheeky enough to think, “no surprise there !”), and I was able to take the wheel off, and re-align it so that it would stay “true” for the remainder of the 12 mile bike course.  The Triathlon Trial Lawyer managed to finish in under 65 minutes, or about a minute slower than last year, for 14th overall, out of 550 registrants.  Had I not stopped 3 times, I believe that I would have been in the top 10 again, and had a course PR (= personal record).