San Francisco Injury Lawyer Blog

Automobile collisions can and do cause serious injuries. Insurance companies judge the value of a case by the extent of damage to the vehicles involved. Minor damage, they say, equates with minor injury.

To the insurer, anyone claiming serious injury from a collision that does not appear dramatic to one reviewing photographs, means that the party claiming injury is a liar. Insurance companies categorize these cases as 'fraudulent' and they are dealt with in their 'fraud' department. The carriers instruct their attorneys to hire expensive expert witnesses, including biomechanics witnesses, physicians and other experts to defend the cases at trial. They know that they can outspend most Plaintiff's attorneys and drum up evidence sufficient for their attorneys to argue that the injured person is a malingerer or simply out for secondary gain. This means that they argue the injuries are made up and not real.

I tried a case in October 2007 where the insurer pulled out all of these stops--and more. Still the jury saw through the tactics and fairly compensated this middle aged woman who suffered disc injury in the rear end collision. In the blogs to come, I will take you through the anatomy of this case through to verdict.