Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
“That brings me to this question. How do you put a dollar amount on “pain and suffering”? Because for one person it’s something, and to another it’s something else. And especially to the insurance company that’s defending the issue. They have a completely different viewpoint, I am sure.”
Spencer Freeman – Personal Injury Attorney – Pierce County, WA
“The insurance companies that are going to defend the issue, they’re going to devalue everything. There’s not one formula, in place, that helps us with that calculation. The reality is that those decisions are ultimately made by juries. Because if I know that if I’ve taken a case to a jury trial, with similar sets of circumstances that resulted in a certain dollar value judgment from a jury, now I know what I really can go get. And there’s other ways, it doesn’t need to be me that tried the case. There’s records of other jury trials with similar circumstances. That’s where the value really gets set.”
Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
“There’s a precedent and you can use that data to establish…okay, this is what this case is going to be worth to bring you back to, as you mentioned earlier, that position of being whole.”
Spencer Freeman – Personal Injury Attorney – Pierce County, WA
“Correct. And that’s how everybody, including insurance companies, are going to…they’re going use those numbers to try to create some sort of economic value today. And there’s a lot of things that insurance companies will use to factor into that, the costs of litigation, the risks of litigation. When people might get upset about the ultimate result or settlement, at the end of the day, it’s juries that make those decisions.”