Nobody – of course – wants to lose his or her personal injury case. Naturally, you want to take the right steps to maximize your potential recovery. But are there ways to lose your personal injury case? Are there things you can do that hurt your chances for a successful recovery? Yes, there are!
In this four-part blog series, we will discuss 4 big ways to potentially lose your personal injury case.
The first way to lose your personal injury case is by lying.
When you have a personal injury case, it is incredibly important to be truthful on every topic. This includes your accident history, your medical history, your current injuries, and the facts of your current accident.
Indeed, failing to tell the truth about your injury case can have a wide range of harmful consequences – including possible criminal penalties.
Let me give an example from my personal experience.
Before I opened up Barthelette Law and devoted my practice to represent injury victims, I represented insurance companies. In a particularly memorable case, the insurance company assigned us to represent a driver accused of hitting a women in a parking lot. The women who was hit had a good case; she was wrongfully hit and had to spend one week in the hospital. Several months later, I took the women’s deposition. She claimed that the accident led her to be homebound and that she could no longer do any sort of physical activity, including going to the gym and playing golf. However, little did she know that the insurance company had video evidence of her being quite active – including playing golf and going to the gym!
Unfortunately for the women, my deposition of her all but destroyed her credibility. Nothing she said could be trusted.
As a result of her deposition testimony, her case value plummeted. Before her deposition, her case worth six figures. After her deposition, it was worth far, far less and ultimately settled for a nominal amount.
As you can see, being untruthful never pays. In my own practice, I like to tell my clients that we can work with the truth; if you lie, your credibility and your case are likely over.
We hope you enjoyed this post!
In our next post, we will discuss the second biggest way to lose your personal injury case – not getting medical care.
Stay tuned!