Pain and Suffering

Normally when I investigate an accident on behalf of the victim, I focus on specifics that will ultimately comprise the personal injury settlement. Those specifics are: medical bills, future, medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering. (Some states have punitive damages instead of pain and suffering)

Medical bills and lost wages, while complex, are relatively quantifiable and more easily translated into a monetary value. Pain and suffering, however, is an entirely different and much more complex equation. Because accidents that cause injuries also cause a great deal of pain and suffering.

Not just pain and suffering in "the ouch it hurts" sense...
rather, pain and suffering on an emotional level for the injured party... and the people around that injured person. This would be the deep, soul-searing psychological pain and suffering that happens after an accident.

Pain and suffering is one of the factors I assess when I am investigating an injury case -- from dog bites to vehicle fatalities, patio collapses to drive-by shootings.
Pain and suffering is about the after-shocks, the post traumatic stress, the under currents of terror that come from being victimized out of the blue.

In every personal injury case I've investigated -- and there have been thousands -- the victims I interviewed had no clue the world was about to crash in on him, her and/or their families, friends and co-workers.

The injury, the accident, the blow... it comes out of the blue.
And when something horrible happens to you in an instant, there comes a "knowingness,"
a previously inconceivable knowledge...
that you can be hit head-on by a drunk driver while taking the kids home from school....
or your kid can be standing at a bus stop when a drive-by gang-banger misses his target and the bullet ends in your 17 years old's spine...
or you could be a a mailman walking the same route every day for 10 years when one day a pit bull runs from someone's backyard and nearly takes your arm off.
How do put a price tag on knowing that stuff can happen again... because it happened to you once already. How do you quantity that level of pain and suffering?

Fortunately, the monetary part of the equation is not my job. The lawyers handle that. My role is to uncover, observe, photograph and describe true pain and suffering in a way the attorney can grasp it. And then... the attorney must somehow translate my words into numbers an insurance adjustor, judge or jury can accept or dispute.

So as I said when I started this post, my job is to observe, then document, pain and suffering regarding the specific case or accident I am investigating.
I tend to ask about the past, yet not delve in it.
My main focus is what has happened since the injury.
And while I must document prior accident, injuries, illness, pre-existing conditions, all of that... the lifetime before the accident is a place I visit, yet rarely linger.

Yet this morning, on my first case of the day, the pain and suffering a 35 year old woman endured in the single year before this accident stopped me in my tracks.

Shakira (a pseudonym) was a single mother of two...an accountant. Somehow she found her way to Seattle about 5 years ago. Ever since she arrived she'd been trying to leave. All her family lived in California, she followed her boyfriend-turned-fiance here. He turned out to be a parasite who went about cleaning out her bank account. The accident I investigated was her final straw. As I walked in the living room, all her belonging were packed or in the process thereof.

The facts of her accident were simple enough. She was in her beloved Lexus at a complete stop at a crosswalk when she was rear-ended by a woman in her 80's who stepped on the gas instead of the brake. My client was more concerned about the old lady than herself, she said. The old lady kept apologizing.

Shakira called 911... but I suspect... because of the neighborhood and nationality of people who live there... the police were not sent to the scene. (I wrote a note to order the 911 call and transcript).
Instead, the 911 operator said to exchange insurance information, drive their cars home or call tow trucks if necessary. There was no mention of ambulances.
Information was exchanged at the scene, Shakira's car was towed to a shop and the old woman drove away.

Shakira started to feel bad about two hours after the accident. Within 4 hours she was at the ER. She has been off work ever since. An MRI revealed torn ligaments in her neck, a bulging disc in her back. Despite her injuries, Shakira said, since both parties have insurance and the Defendant's insurance company accepted liability, you would think the whole thing could be settled without an attorney.
After all, Shakira was an accountant. So at first, she figured she could figure the whole thing out without giving an attorney a piece of her settlement pie.
Not so.

Shakira said she was treated so rudely by the Defendant's insurance adjustor that she cursed at her. That prompted a three way conversation between Shakira's insurance adjustor and the cursed-at Defendant adjustor.

All Shakira wanted immediately was a rental car to use while hers was in the shop. All the Defendant's insurance company wanted to to do was to say "in due time". Meantime Shakira had to pay a friend to take her kids to and from school every day, to take them to classes, to take her shopping.

Shakira was at the end of her rope when I arrived. Her neighbor told her to call the attorney who called me. It was just after I gathered all the info critical to the accident that Shakira began to tell me about her past year.

"It's been a horrible year," she whispered
"What happened?" I asked.

In January, she said, her grandfather died.
In February, her step-mother died.
In March, her father died. He was the glue of the whole family she said.
In April her 37 year old sister had a stroke.
In March, her mother fell and broke her hip.
In May she lent her fiancee $40,000 he said he would pay back in three months.
I asked, "$40K? At your age? How'd you come into that?"

I"m an accountant" she said,"I don't party, don't drug, don't go to clubs. I take care of my girls. I saved every cent I made in the stock market and sold before the bubble burst. Before the accident I had 60k in the bank and when my fiance said he needed a loan of 40k... and he would pay it back... I trusted him."

I asked if he worked.
"Yes, he did at the time of the loan," she said, "He was a mortgage broker."
The irony didn't escape either of us.

"So in September," she continued,"my house was robbed."
In August, her fiance skipped town.
In September, they discovered toxic mold growing in her closets.
And now, this accident.

I did what I could, and said what I could, to let her know that now, maybe the tide was turning. The attorneys would help her get her rental car when they spoke with Defendant's insurance company. The doctors would continue to treat her. And the lawyers would cover her back. All she had to do was survive and heal.

"I know, " I said "easier said than done" as I watched the tears finally flow from her eyes down her cheeks.
I reminded her of all she'd been through and endured.
She said she prays to God every day for the strength to go on.
I told her to keep praying because evidently, its working.
I said of she were in a smaller car and not her beloved Lexus, she would could have been critically injured.
I said her children still have their mother, soon she'll have a rental car and life will begin again.
I also made her promise me she would tell no one about any settlement she might get. It was hers and hers alone.

She walked me outside and we parted on the street corner.
I reached for her hand to shake it, she reached out to me for a hug.
That is unusual for me with clients, there are boundaries I generally do not cross as an investigator. Goodbye hugs is one of those. This girl needed it, and I appreciated it.
I slipped my business card in her hand and we parted ways.

I watched her as she walked slowly to her chiro,who was just down the street.
I walked back to my car and felt grateful for my job and the ability the attorneys have given me to help.

Tomorrow's case is south of Tacoma, at a military base. One more soldier mowed down by a drunk driver. Once I make it through the security gate at the entrance to the base, which is an ordeal in itself, who knows what awaits.