Your Lawyer Should Recognize Chronic Pain and Validate It to the Jury
Pain is something all plaintiffs claim to suffer. Pain suffered by our clients can range from mild to severe. Mild pain is routinely manageable, often ultimately resolves, and rarely limits functionality completely or permanently.
Severe pain, however, is distracting, debilitating, and often unresolved. Chronic, severe pain can lead to suicidal ideation, depression, frustration, sleeplessness, anxiety, and distraction. It is characterized by limited to no functionality. It is treated, when surgery fails, by ongoing medical management. This can have the unfortunate consequence of pain medication/opioid addiction.
Recognizing and believing a client’s pain level and validating client pain complaints are crucial to proving a client’s injuries and damages when ongoing, chronic pain is present. Because pain is largely subjective and not necessarily measurable by any objective standard, it is imperative on the plaintiffs’ lawyer to present a client’s pain to the jury in a measured, credible way to maximize recovery. The testimony of treating doctors as to what level and consistency of pain can be expected given certain injuries and treatment is a crucial piece of the puzzle. As crucial, if not more so, is the evidence gathered by lay witnesses who can testify specifically to observations of the injured Plaintiff before and after injury. Typically, co-workers or friends outside of immediate family should be able to provide objective evidence of first-hand observations of a plaintiff’s pain and suffering following an incident. The more specific the examples of post-incident compromise, the more compelling the evidence. General platitudes of post-accident pain and suffering remain less forceful than specific, concrete observations of problems following a traumatic event.
If you have been injured in an accident and are suffering chronic pain as a result, you need representation by sensitive lawyers well-versed and experienced in proving to defense counsel, their insurance carriers, and, ultimately, a jury the physiologically and psychologically crippling barriers to daily living erected by ongoing, unrelenting pain. At Saltz, Mongeluzzi & Bendesky, we have the lawyers, the resources, and the experience necessary to prove that your subjective complaints of pain are objectively verifiable. Please contact us to assist you through this troubling time.