William “Bill” Hurst, Indiana Personal Injury Lawyer
In the last ten to fifteen years there has been a lot of talk about accident lawsuits creating backup in the courts, and more specifically personal injury accident cases. Much of this talk centers on the idea that too many frivolous Indiana personal injury accident cases are filed causing the courts to deal with ridiculous cases instead of being able to get to the really important lawsuits. The problem with this concept is that it is completely false. There are multiple reasons frivolous claims are rarely brought including attorney sanctions for bringing such claims, monetary incentives, and Indiana courts can dispose of such cases without allowing them to get to trial. In all my time practicing I have seldom, if ever, seen a frivolous accident lawsuit in Indiana. Why? Because it is difficult to resolve or settle any injury claim, even those which are clearly owed. Certainly a lawsuit without merit ends in a personal debt for the attorney and client.
In this post-tort reform era there are still people claiming that too many frivolous lawsuits are brought and that Indiana personal injury accident claims are to blame for backed up courts. This just is not true. The statistics point to the exact opposite. Civil suits make up about 75% of all cases filed in the United States. Personal injury accident cases, however only make up around 1.3% of those civil cases.1 Further, only 1 out of every 10 injured people seek compensation and only 2% of those people file lawsuits. So only 2 out of every 1,000 people who are injured file lawsuits to recover for their injuries. And the idea that personal injury cases often bring in large amount of cash is also false, on average personal injury claims are only awarded $31,000.2 So why have Indiana personal injury cases received such a bad reputation? The simple answer is because large corporations and insurance companies don’t like paying for injuries they are responsible for causing or covering the cost of so they portrayed personal injury cases poorly. The most famous example of this is the McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case.