Our California Serious Injury Lawyers Discuss The Damages Recoverable in Catastrophic Injury Cases, From a Car, Motorcycle or Pedestrian Auto Accident, Premises Liability Medical Malpractice Drug Product Liability Food Poisoning and Other Negligence. Our Attorneys Serve Northern & Southern California in Los Angeles the San Francisco Bay Area Orange County Ventura Fresno Santa Clara County San Jose Berkeley and Oakland, from San Diego to Sacramento.

Serious and sometimes catastrophic injuries occur every day in California, all too often as the result of the negligence of another. A baby may be born into this world with a serious brain injury or brachial plexus palsy as the result of obstetrical malpractice and never know life as a healthy youngster or adult. All of us are at risk of the negligent auto driver, and we may suffer life changing spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, catastrophic orthopedic injuries, debilitating internal injuries and limb amputations.. Falls resulting from defective or poorly maintained commercial or residential structures can sometimes result in serious spinal cord injuries. Defective and dangerous products are manufactured, including pharmaceuticals which often lead also to serious injuries.

Preparing and presenting the complex evidence and expert testimony essential to obtain full and fair compensation for the catastrophically injured client requires the expertise of a highly qualified California trial lawyer extensively experienced in complex catastrophic injury litigation. The purpose of this page is to provide the reader an insight into the measure of damages in serious injury litigation, the complexity of the qualified trial lawyer's task in fully preparing the evidence of the client's "general" and "special" damages, and then our strategies for presenting the damage evidence in settlement conferences and trial to maximize our clients recoveries.

Our California catastrophic injury lawyers will discuss below the "general damages" recoverable in serious injury cases, as well as the recoverable "special damages," including past and future medical expense and past and future loss of earnings claims. General damages include what is commonly referred to as "pain and suffering" damages, but in catastrophic injury cases often most importantly includes the clients "loss of enjoyment of life" damages. Unlike "special damages" general damages are not subject to precise calculation, and are less susceptible than special damages to demonstration by expert testimony. Treating physicians and expert specialists are certainly used to describe the nature and extent of the injury, the client's post-accident medical history, his surgeries, rehabilitation, sometimes convalescent care. The medical experts and specialists are often important to provide the objective evidence of the plaintiff's pain or psychological anguish. But an essential strategy, and often the most compelling strategy to impress settlement judges or jurors is in eliciting the testimony of the client, family members and friends describing all the activities that the client enjoyed prior to his injuries which he can no longer enjoy. In catastrophic injury cases in which the client is brain damaged or paralyzed or confined to a hospital or convalescent center, or receiving home nursing care or the care of his family, our serious injury lawyers will juxtapose the evidence of the client's full life prior to the accident with a professionally created "Day in the Life" documentary, showing the dignity and courage of the catastrophically injured client as he meets all of the difficulties of his post-accident daily life.

First, however, our California serious injury lawyers will discuss the preparation and presentation of "special damages" which include past and future medical expenses, and past and future loss of earnings or earning capacity. In catastrophic injury cases, the calculation of future medical expenses and future loss of earnings is particularly complex requiring a highly competent California serious injury trial lawyer experienced in bringing together all the foundation and appropriate experts, including perhaps most importantly highly qualified life care planners, vocational rehabilitation experts and forensic economists.

The elements of damage we discuss, and the strategies for presenting each element of damages at settlement conferences or to the jury at trial are essential to maximizing the recoveries obtained by catastrophically injured clients. The attorney you select for your serious injury case should be highly experienced in presenting the complex damage evidence as well as highly experienced as a trial lawyer in prosecuting cases involving the particular liability case arising from the facts of the accident or incident which led to your injury. We invite you to consider also our separate pages listed in the "Practice Areas" menu, which describe our qualifications and experience as highly qualified trial lawyers for complex liability cases, as California medical malpractice lawyers and pharmaceutical product liability attorneys, food poisoning lawyers, birth injury attorneys, car motorcycle and pedestrian auto accident lawyers, traumatic brain injury attorneys and spinal cord injury lawyers serving Northern and Southern California, from Sacramento to San Diego, in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area Berkeley Oakland Santa Clara Fresno Ventura Los Angeles and Orange County.

If you have suffered serious injury in any county in the State of California we welcome you to contact us for a free consultation. You may submit the "California Serious Injury Lawyer Case Evaluation Request" and one of our experienced California catastrophic injury trial lawyers will call you to discuss the facts of your accident or the incident which led to your injury, your diagnosis and prognosis, the impact your serious injury has had on your life, and will will provide you our case evaluation and recommendations. Our California serious injury attorney case consultations are entirely free of charge.

Our California Serious Injury Lawyers Discuss the Preparation and Presentation of Medical Special Damages in Catastrophic Injury Cases.

Introduction

The damages recoverable in a catastrophic injury case include "general" and "special" damages. We will discuss our California serious injury attorneys approach to general damages last. Preparing and presenting a client's special damages, including his or her past and future medical expenses and past and future loss of earnings is the subject of a defined strategy adopted by our experienced California serious injury trial lawyers. General damages are always unique, usually not amenable to precise calculation by qualified experts. As you will read following our discussion of special damages, the presentation of general damages relies in large part upon the serious injury trial lawyer getting to know the client, gathering the evidence of his unique experience of his pain and suffering, sometimes his mental distress or depression associated with his injury, his physical limitations and his "loss of enjoyment of life." In presenting the general damages the serious injury trial lawyer will adapt strategies unique to the particular case, such as juxtaposing the evidence of all that the seriously injured client enjoyed in his life against a professionally filmed "Day in the Life" documentary showing the dignity and courage of the client in meeting all of the difficulties and challenges presented by his post accident injuries and limitations.

Our Strategies For the Presentation of the Seriously Injured Client's Past and Future Medical Expense Claim

While the presentation of past medical expenses is commonly uncomplicated, the presentation of "future medical expense" is particularly complex and appropriate strategies, including the use of qualified experts, life care planners and forensic economists can make a big difference in the recovery the client obtains by settlement or by jury verdict. The calculation of past medical expense in most cases requires no more than an accounting of the accumulation of medical bills through the date of the settlement conference or trial. The preparation of the evidence of "future medical expenses" is much more complex, particularly in serious injury cases, because to achieve the most complete accounting requires first, competent and qualified expert testimony with regard to the client's "life expectancy," and then the appropriate research to anticipate and value all of the periodic medical and specialist care, convalescent or home nursing expenses, equipment and replacement equipment or prostheses, other medical supplies, and all other related expenses that the catastrophically injured client will require over the all remaining years of his or her future life expectancy.

In every serious injury case our highly experienced California trial lawyers employ highly qualified experts to analyze our clients' future medical expenses. Most importantly we will engage the services of a professional "life care planner." The life care planner, with our assistance, will elicit the cooperation of the client's treating physicians, as well as expert specialists, and other health care professionals who will be crucial to laying the foundation for the "life care plan." The physicians and experts who will assist the life care planner will be those determined to be best able to comprehensively describe the kinds of medical treatment, surgeries, prosthetics, medications, supplies, nursing care, attendant care, convalescent care, and all other categories of medical and incidental expense which the client will require over the short term and throughout all the remaining years the client is estimated to live. The life care planner will obtain the information with regard to the costs of all the anticipated medical expenses. Establishing the "life expectancy" of the client with catastrophic injuries is a very important part of the assessment of future medical expenses. It requires calculation by qualified experts. It commonly requires an analysis of both the detailed facts of the client's medical condition and application of appropriate government statistics with regard to life expectancies of individuals with the same or similar medical histories and injuries occurring at the same age.

Every case is unique in terms of the nature of the injury, diagnosis and prognosis, and so the contribution of the qualified California catastrophic injury lawyer, life care planner, and the medical experts providing the foundational information in each case will vary, but the approach is in most cases similar. The professional life care planner will interview the client's treating physicians and the other highly qualified experts engaged by the experienced California serious injury attorney, to provide the foundation for the detailed "life care plan," accounting for all of the medical and other associated expenses, big and small, which the client will require over the course of his or her life expectancy. It is very important that a highly qualified life care planer be engaged and that the experience California trial lawyer be actively involved in providing the essential foundation and reviewing the plan, because it is common for the lawyers for the defendants in serious injury cases to attempt to undermine the life care plan calculations by cross examination of the life planner in deposition and at trial. An experienced California serious injury lawyer will go over every element of the life care plan with the professional life care planner to assure that all the medical expenses claimed are reasonable, and equally important, assure that the estimated duration over which the life care planner has calculated the future medical expenses is accurately calculated based upon an appropriate foundation.

Our California serious injury trial lawyers will then provide the life care plan to a forensic economist who in turn will apply standard government statistics on the expected year to year rise in costs for the specific categories of medical expense over the course of the plaintiff's life expectancy to arrive an assessment of the total future medical expenses accounting for medical cost inflation. The economist will then "discount" this sum of all future medical expenses plus medical cost inflation to "present value" using standard general rates of inflation, again based standard government statistics to arrive at the value of the future medical expenses in "current dollars."

The reports of the expert life care planner and economist and the foundation for the testimony will be presented at settlement conferences to the presiding judge or settlement officer in the form of a "settlement brochure," and if the case can't be settled for an amount satisfactory to the client, then the experienced California serious injury trial attorney will present the testimony of the life care planner and forensic economist at the trial of the client's case.

Our California Serious Injury Trial Lawyers Discuss the Preparation and Presentation of Loss of Earnings Damages in the Catastrophic Injury Case.

It is a sad fact that we, as California catastrophic injury lawyers, must recognize, that in many of our serious injury cases the careers of our clients in their chosen profession will often be cut short. Some of our catastrophically injured clients will not have the reasonable prospect of returning to the work force, or not in the profession they trained for and developed competence by years of work experience. Many of the clients, even with very serious injuries will find that that they can adapt to their disabilities and return to economically productive endeavor. It is an essential function of the experienced catastrophic injury lawyer to prepare the evidence and team of experts to present the "net" loss of future earnings that the seriously injured client will suffer over the course of his or her "work life expectancy." "Net" loss of earnings involves the comparison of the earnings the client would have earned if he were not injured, less the earnings that the experts calculate that the client will likely earn in the profession he has chosen after the injury or the earnings that the client could reasonably earn in the professions or in the types of work that he is still capable of performing given the limitations imposed by his injury.

The experienced California serious injury attorney will also be adept at preparing and then presenting at voluntary and mandatory settlement conferences and at the trial of his client's case the most persuasive foundation and expert testimony establishing the full measure of his clients lost past and future earnings. The measure of "past earnings losses" is, in the most common case of a wage earner not difficult to calculate, indeed, often it is as simple as multiplying his or her daily wage by the number of work days from the date of the accident through the date of the settlement conference or trial. But the presentation of the plaintiff's full measure of "future earnings losses" requires a California trial lawyer with extensive experience in preparing and trying catastrophic injury cases.

The seriously injured client's future economic losses, again taking the simplest case of the wage earner for purposes of this example, are measured by calculating the wages that the client would have earned over the course of his "work life expectancy" if he or she had not been injured, less the amount he still is likely to earn or is reasonably capable of earning, taking into consideration the severity of his limitations implied by his or her injury. The preparation of the seriously injured client's "future loss of earnings" requires two primary experts, a "vocational rehabilitation expert" and a forensic economist, and then the cooperation of many others, including the plaintiff's treating physicians and/or specialists hired by the experienced serious injury attorney. The vocational rehabilitation expert will spend a substantial amount of time interviewing the client, possibly over the course of a number of meetings, he will also speak to the client's treating physicians, and those involved in his physical rehabilitation and his physical and occupational therapists. He will review the client's medical records, obtain his school transcripts, review his educational history and accomplishments, and his full work history. He will often conduct a battery of tests and will determine if the client has transferable education, training or skills.

Necessary to his assessment of future loss of earnings, he will determine the client's "work life expectancy," using the client's pre-injury expectations and/or statistics to estimate the period of future years over which the client would probably have continued to work if he had not been injured. He will also use the medical foundation and statistics to arrive also at an estimate of the period of future years over which the client will probably be capable of working given the nature and limitations imposed by his injuries.

The vocational rehabilitation expert will arrive at a measure first of the earnings that the seriously injured client would probably have earned over the years of his or her "work life expectancy" if he or she had not been injured. If the seriously injured client has not returned to the work force or hasn't chosen a new profession, the rehabilitation expert will then analyze the types of work which will be foreclosed to the seriously injured client in the future by reason of his injuries, and he will identify those types of employment that the client would be reasonably capable of performing, assuming that the client is not totally disabled.

Our experienced California serious injury lawyer will then engage a highly qualified forensic economist to review the vocational rehabilitation expert's report. With the report as foundation, the forensic economist will apply government statistics to assess the likely future earnings that the client would have earned over his work life expectancy if he had not been injured, increased by the specific wage inflation statistics for the profession in which the client was engaged prior to the accident and injury. He will subtract the mitigating amount of earnings that the client will or would be reasonably capable of earning over his post injury work life expectancy, in the profession which he has chosen or the professions for which he has the education, skill and physical ability still to work. The economist will then discount the net future earnings losses to present dollar value again by use of government inflation statistics.

Experienced catastrophic injury trial lawyers will understand that the quality of the foundation for the opinions of the vocational rehabilitation expert and the forensic economist, and then the quality of the presentation of the future earnings losses by the experienced California serious injury lawyer at settlement conferences and trial will define the prospects that the seriously injured client will receive his or her full measure of economic damages.

Our experienced serious injury lawyers recognize that it is important for the client to understand why we must include in the assessment of future earnings losses, the fair estimate of the amount that the client will be capable of earning notwithstanding his substantial injury in every case where the client is not totally disabled. The first reason is that it is required to present the "net" earnings losses, not gross earnings losses. The client must realize that it will be strident lawyers for the defendants in catastrophic injury litigation who will cross examine our vocational rehabilitation experts and forensic economists at their depositions and at trial, and these attorneys for the defendants in serious injury litigation involving substantial future loss of earnings claims will present their own vocational rehabilitation and economist experts who will try to use every possible tactic available to them to attempt to undermine the calculations of the plaintiff's experts calculations. The defense experts will also offer their alternative calculations minimizing the plaintiff's the future earnings losses. And the client needs to appreciate that the judges who preside over settlement conferences and jurors who will determine the plaintiff's damages at trial, will most commonly accept the future loss of earnings calculations and analyses of the experts whom they consider most "credible." The experienced California catastrophic injury attorney therefore must assure as a function of the foundational information gathered and developed by his experts, and the methods of calculation and analysis they use, that it will be the plaintiff's expert's testimony on future loss of earnings that will be accepted by the settlement judge or jury as the most credible. It is widely recognized by experienced California catastrophic injury lawyers that our jurors and even settlement judges become more sympathetic and identify more with the seriously injured client who makes an effort to meet the difficulties and challenges presented by his injury and limitations, including by the client's seeking to remain a productive member of society or begin to train to return in some capacity to the work force.

One of the joys of catastrophic injury lawyer is that often his client's consultations with the vocational rehabilitation expert will lead his client to realize that he or she may have good opportunities to return to a productive life, often times opportunities that the client might never have considered. In some cases client may see that he or she would benefit by additional education or vocational training. But in so many cases his or her reward will be in the satisfaction to be gained in the new profession, as well as remaining a productive member of society.

Our experienced California catastrophic injury attorneys realize that every client is unique, and furthermore that the lawyer must adapt his case strategy to his client's unique physical limitations and psychological strengths. There is no one cookie cutter approach for all serious injury litigation. In the above analysis discussing our approach to future earnings losses we considered only what would be required to prepare and present the simplest case of a wage earner's losses. There are different and sometimes much more complex strategies which must be adopted where the client is a business owner or professional in partnership or operating a sole proprietorship, just as examples. Some seriously injured clients may have lost their businesses or may have been required to sell their businesses following their injury. They may have been professionals or executives or employees of businesses where they had good prospects for job advancement, possibly with substantial opportunity for pay increases which must be accounted for in the attorney's approach. Every client's case is unique and it is the responsibility of the experienced California catastrophic injury attorney to adapt strategies to the presentation of the client's unique economic losses. Our serious injury trial lawyers also represent clients who are minors, with no work history and homemakers who have had no history of paid employment or whose history of employment is decades old, requiring a shift of approach to an analysis of "loss of earning capacity." It is essential in all catastrophic injury cases that the experienced California serious injury trial lawyer be engaged who is able to adopt an approach to the preparation of his client's unique economic damages so that a credible and persuasive presentation can be made to the settlement judge or to the jurors at trial so as to assure that you have the very best prospects of obtaining full and fair economic loss compensation..

Our California Catastrophic Injury Attorneys Discuss the Preparation and Presentation of the Client's General Damage - Pain and Suffering and "Loss of Enjoyment of Life" Damages.

Our California serious injury attorneys work most closely with our clients in developing the evidence and strategy for the presentation of their "general damages. Many personal injury lawyers refer to general damages as "pain and suffering," and this perspective may be accurate in many cases where the client does not suffer substantial limitations in terms of the activities that he can engage in. In catastrophic injury litigation, our strategy for obtaining compensation for the full measure of our clients' damages will depend upon the nature of the injury and the extent our clients' physical limitations. Our California serious injury lawyers in many of our cases consider that in addition to our client's pain, the value of his "loss of enjoyment of life" may constitute the most persuasive general damage claim. Neither pain and suffering nor "loss of enjoyment of life" damages are susceptible to precise calculation. In that respect presenting the general damages claims is different from the types of calculations as we've seen result from our strategies for presenting the special damage medical expense and earnings loss evidence. Neither are general damages fully or adequately demonstrable solely by expert testimony, as are commonly the elements of special economic damages. Treating physician and medical expert testimony is certainly necessary to present the nature and extent of the injury, the client's post-accident medical history, surgeries, rehabilitation and other therapy, and very importantly, to describe the client's physical limitations. The treating physicians' or expert specialist's testimony may also be useful in some cases to to provide objective evidence supportive of our client's pain, and sometimes an expert psychologist or psychiatrist may be called to convey to the jury an objective insight into our client's sadness or depression that may in some cases form an important part of the particular client's post accident experience of life.

Very commonly the most important evidence forming the basis for an award of general damages in serious injury litigation will be the testimony of catastrophically injured client, his spouse, or sometimes his parents, or his children, perhaps other family members or friends. Our experienced California serious injury lawyers will want to spend time with our clients and speak to those closest to him to learn everything we can about the changes in the quality of his life resulting from his injuries and his physical limitations. We will also gather the photographs and home videos depicting our client engaging in the activities he once could, but can no longer enjoy as the result of the accident which left him catastrophically injured. In any particular case our clients' most cherished activities might be taking Winter skiing vacations with the family, or playing softball in the Spring, or attending their children's soccer team practices, perhaps serving as an assistant coach or team Mom, or just lifting up their grandchildren or taking walks in the evening with his spouse.

Through this testimony of the client, his family and friends, and photographic evidence, we weave the fabric for the pre-accident element of our "loss of enjoyment of life" claim. And then we will juxtapose it against the evidence of our client's post-accident life, which our experienced catastrophic injury lawyers commonly present most powerfully by use of a professionally filmed "Day in the Live" documentary. The purpose of the "Day in the Life" film is to show to the settlement judge or jury all that the catastrophically injured client must struggle with now as a part of his post-accident daily life. Our "Day in the Life" documentaries are filmed by professionals with substantial experience in recognizing and then capturing the difficulties of the catastrophically injured client's daily life, and then portraying the dignity and courage of the catastrophically injured client as he faces up to his challenges to make the best of his life, struggling valiantly overcome the surmountable hurdles. The "Day in the Life" documentaries also illustrate the hurdles which are insurmountable given the client's post-accident limitations; indeed, it may often times be just the simple things that most others of us take for granted that we can do for ourselves which the catastrophically injured client must rely on others to do for him.

As experienced catastrophic injury lawyers it is our judgment based on our experience that in most serious injury cases, where the client is not totally disabled, as might be true with a client who has suffered a profound traumatic brain injury, that the "Day in the Life" documentaries should show also the courage if not the heroism of the catastrophically injured client as he confronts his enormous life obstacles, determined, if not to fully overcome them, still to make his most valiant effort to make the very best of his life. We believe that this is most commonly how the client would prefer to portray himself, and our experience is that as our clients' are shown to approach their post-accident limitations with dignity and courage, the settlement judge and jurors will see in our clients what the type of dignity and heroism that they would hope to bring to their lives if they were similarly injured. It is our experience that this translates into great "identification" with our clients on the part of settlement judges and jurors, and greater sympathy for our clients, which we believe is the best strategy in most cases to obtain full compensation for our catastrophically injured clients' "loss of enjoyment of life" damages.

Presenting our catastrophically injured clients' "general damages" to settlement judges and jurors is the art of the experienced serious injury injury attorney beginning with presenting qualified expert medical testimony often from the perspective of multiple specialists describing the nature and extent of the client's injury and the his limitations, sometimes also pain specialists or psychologists or psychiatrists. It involves also obtaining a full appreciation for all that his client enjoyed in his life before the accident and then all that his client lost on the day when the accident rendered him catastrophically injured. Specifically, it is the preparation and presentation of the testimony of his client, his client's spouse or children or parents or close friends, and the family photographs and home movies, juxtaposed against client's post-accident limitations evidenced by the "Day in the Life" film. In presenting the evidence to settlement judges, the experienced trial lawyer will prepare a "settlement brochure" which will summarize the enjoyment of life evidence, and then he will play to "Day in the Life" documentary. In opening statement and closing argument at trial, the experienced California catastrophic injury lawyer will then weaves this "loss of enjoyment of life" evidence into a fabric that will most effectively create juror identification with the client and sympathy while impressing jurors the emotional impact of the full weight of all the client lost.

It is an enormous responsibility that qualified trial lawyers take on when undertaking the representation of a seriously injured client. We must prepare the liability case, whether it is locating and deposing the witnesses to an auto accident, or by assembling the most qualified medical experts to testify to the negligence of an errant physician in medical malpractice cases, employing engineers to examine the dangerous and defective product which caused the client's injury. And then, equally important, in catastrophic injury cases, the experienced trial lawyer knowledgeable about the strategies for presenting general damages in serious injury cases will prepare the "loss of enjoyment of life" claims, meet with the family and friends, gather the photographs, engage a professional film maker to produce the appropriately sensitive "Day in the Life" documentary, and gather the foundation for the special medical and loss of earnings claims essential to the testimony of the life care planners, vocational rehabilitation experts and forensic economists. It is a huge and often complex undertaking, and it is a very serious responsibility for the lawyer. The seriously injured client should make certain that the lawyer he engages to represent him is appropriately qualified in complex litigation and broadly experienced in the preparation and trial of serious injury litigation, so that you may be assured through the months that your case progresses through the court system that your lawyer has the essential knowledge, experience and commitment to meet his weighty responsibilities.

Our California Catastrophic Injury Lawyers Offer Free Consultations to All Who Have Suffered Serious Injury in Southern or Northern California, from San Diego to Sacramento, from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area, in Orange County Ventura Fresno Santa Clara County San Jose Berkeley and Oakland. We are Serious Injury Car Motorcycle and Bicycle Accident Lawyers, Medical Malpractice Attorneys, Product Liability Lawyer, Birth Injury Attorney, Food Poisoning Lawyers Elder Abuse and Premises Liability Attorneys

Our California serious injury lawyers welcome you to contact us for a free consultation. You may submit the e-mail form "Serious Injury Attorneys Case Evaluation Request" and we will contact you to discuss the facts of your case, learn about your injuries and damages, and provide you our initial impressions, case evaluation and recommendations.

We are very highly credentialed complex trial attorneys with extensive experience successfully representing catastrophically injured clients. You may review attorney Henke's trial lawyer credentials described briefly in the right column of this page. You may review a few of his recent jury verdicts and settlements in complex serious injury litigation in the left column of the page. You are also encouraged to review our credentials as medical malpractice lawyers, pharmaceutical product liability attorneys, birth injury lawyers, traumatic brain injury attorneys, paralysis and spinal cord injury attorneys, food poisoning lawyers, elder abuse attorneys, premises liability lawyers and auto accident attorneys by consulting the "Practice Areas" menu at the top right of this page. We welcome the opportunity to speak with you.