Victims of car accidents, slip-and-fall accidents, and other incidents that leave them with expensive, debilitating, and in all too many instances even life-altering, injuries are often aware that injuries that are considered especially serious are sometimes approached differently by negligent parties – and their insurance providers – than those that are perceived to be more minor. This awareness naturally leads these accident victims to wonder: What is considered a serious personal injury? There is no one answer to that question that fits all occasions, but there are a few factors that can frequently come into play. If you have questions about how the seriousness of your own injuries is likely to affect the handling of your accident injury claim, a Missouri personal injury attorney with Steelman Gaunt Crowley may be able to offer perspective tailored to your individual situation in a free consultation. Call our office in Rolla at (573) 341.8336 to schedule.
What Is a Personal Injury Case?
Some of the most common sources of confusion around serious personal injury cases stem from some differences in the way the word injury is used in legal contexts vs. in everyday conversation. Understanding some of the specificities of legal “jargon” can make discussions of personal injury cases easier to navigate.
The Meaning of “Personal Injury” in Law
“Personal injury” cases belong to the broader area of civil torts law. A “tort” is a wrong by one party that negatively impacts someone else. The “wrong” may be either an action or an omission, and the parties to a civil torts case may be individuals (sometimes called “natural” persons) or entities (sometimes called “legal” persons). According to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII), the term personal injury itself is used by way of contradistinction to civil torts cases alleging injury to a party’s property rights. Thus while the “injury” alleged in a case over property rights will almost always be predicated on some form of infringement of the plaintiff’s property rights (often in the form of some action by the defendant that makes it difficult for the plaintiff to enjoy the full use of their own property), in personal injury cases the plaintiff will typically allege that they have suffered damage to their property (not an infringement of their rights to that property), their body, or both.
Injury vs. Damages vs. Loss
Civil torts based on both property law and personal injury claims often allege losses arising from the initial tort. In personal injury cases, the losses alleged by plaintiffs often include financial burdens, such as medical expenses and missed income due to time off work, sometimes along with the costs of repairs or replacements for property that was damaged as a result the alleged tort (for instance, the cost of repairing a vehicle that was damaged in an accident caused by another driver’s negligence).
Personal injury cases may also allege other types of harm, such as loss of enjoyment of formerly beloved activities due to the effects of physical injuries (the ordinary, conversational-use type of “injury”) sustained as a result of the incident. When a personal injury case goes to trial and wins a successful verdict, the result is usually an award of damages, which are financial amounts paid by the defendant as compensation for the plaintiff’s losses (regardless of the nature of the loss). A Missouri personal injury lawyer with Steelman Gaunt Crowley may be able to help you understand more in a free consultation.
Severity of Injuries
While “injury” has a distinct usage specific to legal contexts, some other words may also have slightly different meanings, depending on the context in which they are used. Serious is one of these words, with different meanings in legal vs. medical settings. Either or both may be significant in the context of a personal injury case.
Medical Definitions of Seriousness
The National Cancer Institute (NCI), a subdivision of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), offers a helpful definition of “condition” which puts the use of the term “serious” into a typical medical context. According to the NCI, a hospitalized patient’s condition may be categorized as “good,” “stable,” or “serious.” The Association of Health Care Journalists further contextualizes “serious,” when used in reference to a patient’s condition, as describing a situation in which the patient in question is “very ill,” possibly with unstable vital signs; when a patient’s condition is rated as “serious,” the indicators of their current state of health and chances of recovery are regarded as “questionable.”
According to the journalists’ association, a patient condition rating of “serious” falls between “fair,” in which a patient may be experiencing significant discomfort but has stable vital signs and is likely to recover, and “critical,” in which the patient has abnormal and unstable vital signs and may be unconscious, with “unfavorable” indicators for the individual’s chances of recovery. In the context of a personal injury case arising from an accident claim, this type of medical terminology may be used if and when a medical professional is called upon to provide an account of the patient’s history – for instance, describing the condition in which the individual arrived for medical assessment and treatment. Depending on the particulars of the situation, the condition rating might be extended to describe the progression of the patient’s recovery during a hospital stay or outpatient treatment. This kind of conversation may also frequently involve terms such as maximum medical improvement, used to indicate that medical professionals have determined the patient is unlikely to recover further, even with additional treatment.
“Serious” Injuries in Civil vs. Criminal Law
In legal settings, the terminology used for injuries and their severity may differ somewhat depending on whether the case is criminal vs. civil. Several states, including Missouri, have statutes that include the severity of bodily harm sustained by a victim in determining the charges and penalties associated with violent crimes such as assault.
Serious Physical Injuries in Criminal Law
RSMo 556.061(44), for instance, defines “serious physical injury” for the purposes of Missouri’s Criminal Code, as any physical injury that poses a “substantial risk” of death to the victim, causes serious disfigurement (”serious” in this case remains undefined), or one which results in amputation or long-term loss of function in any body part. Notably – and as the statutory definitions in RSMo 556.061 demonstrate – uses of the word “injury” in criminal law are far more likely to rely on the ordinary conversational meaning of “injury” than are those appearing in matters related to civil torts.
Catastrophic and Life-Altering Personal Injury Cases
In personal injury cases, the word “serious” is less often used, although the medical definition can sometimes become important, depending on the circumstances of a particular case. Instead, personal injury professionals are more likely to speak of “catastrophic” or “life-altering” injuries – and they will frequently specify whether the injury in question is “physical” (the kind of injury to an individual’s body that normally appears in everyday conversation and in some criminal codes) vs. a specifically legal injury (which might include not only bodily harm, but losses such as vehicle damage or the destruction of property in an accident).
Generally speaking, terms like “catastrophic” and “life-altering” are used in referring to physical injuries that are so severe that the normal goal of a personal injury lawsuit, which is to restore the injured party to the condition they enjoyed prior to suffering the ill effects of someone else’s tort, cannot practically be met: When an accident caused by negligence results in the victim’s permanent paralysis, for instance, there may be no amount of compensation the defendant could be ordered to pay that would ever truly “make it right.” Cases involving severe physical injuries of this type therefore often involve some degree of adjustment in the approach all involved take toward settlement negotiations and the calculation of appropriate damages, as compared to those of a more straightforward case.
Speak With a Missouri Personal Injury Lawyer
If you have sustained serious physical injuries in an accident that resulted from someone else’s negligence, you may have a claim to compensation for the harms you have suffered. In the most severe cases, unfortunately, there may be no financial payment that could fully compensate an accident victim for the enormity of their losses. These sad situations can demand a refined approach to the calculation of damages and the handling of insurance settlement negotiations. The personal injury team at Steelman Gaunt Crowley offers free consultations to help victims of severe accident injuries evaluate their legal options. Call our Rolla office at (573) 341.8336 to book an appointment with our team.