Articles Posted in Michigan

In Oakland County, Michigan, a jury awarded a $130 million settlement on behalf of a boy suffering from cerebral palsy. The jury found two medical technicians liable for causing the child’s severe and permanent brain damage that resulted in cerebral palsy. The $130 million incident was one of the largest jury settlements in Michigan history.

The Facts of the Case

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the boy and his mother in 2016. The child was 2 months old when the injury occurred in 2006. According to the plaintiff’s attorney, the child requires help to get in and out of the bathtub. The boy’s mother is a full-time caregiver for her son.  These are tough cases.  You can hear about 1,000 of them. But every time, it is like you are hearing the facts for the first time.  It is heartbreaking.

Average settlements in Michigan

Below are sample verdicts and settlements in Michigan traffic accident cases in 2013. These verdicts can help you get a better understanding of the value of personal injury vehicle crash claims in Michigan. That said, take these verdicts with a grain of salt. No two cases are exactly alike. I have been doing this a long time and there is no average personal injury and, importantly, you should know that these cases were not exactly pulled at random.

• Snyder v. Greenhouse Birth Center | 2014 | $5,000,000.  An infant is born with organ failure and severe brain damage following a breech delivery performed by a mid-wife.  He is hospitalized for thirteen days before he sadly passes away. The parents file suit against multiple parties including the midwife who told the parents that it was safe to attempt a vaginal delivery of a breech baby outside of the hospital setting.  Each party dropped out, one by one claiming bankruptcy, except for the midwife who failed to respond to the Plaintiffs’ allegations.  The Plaintiffs won a default judgment against the midwife in the amount of $5 million dollars.  The midwife, however, carried no insurance to cover the verdict.  So, sadly, $5,000,000=$0.

Defendant moved – shocker! – for summary judgment – arguing “Hey, we didn’t know the puddle was there.” Plaintiff maintained there was a dispute of fact as to just how long the puddle was there and whether defendant was on constructive notice of this ostensibly dangerous condition. Specifically, plaintiff argued that because defendant produced no evidence of the condition of the puddle and the time of the fall, he should get an adverse inference jury instruction that the puddle had been on the floor long enough to establish constructive notice.

Plaintiff also argued in its response to the motion – and on appeal – that the condition of the puddle created a factual dispute as to whether someone else made tracks through the puddle before plaintiff. Why would this matter? Well, plaintiff maintains that if the puddle tracks were made, the puddle may have existed for a sufficient duration to attribute constructive notice of the puddle to defendant.

The facts of the case don’t provide any information as to how serious the injuries in this case were. I suspect they were pretty serious – because these lawyers were reaching pretty deep. I admire the effort. But it did not fly here.

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Jury Verdict Research recently released a new study looking at the average personal injury awards in Michigan: $1,089,638. As always, personal injury verdicts conflate the average; the median personal injury compensation award in Michigan is $99,506.

Interestingly, plaintiffs receive a financial recovery in 44% of personal injury lawsuits that go to trial compared to the national average of 52%. These numbers are misleading because the type of case has a huge bearing on both the average recovery and the plaintiffs’ success rate. But this data from Michigan, as well as this settlement and verdict info, are still interesting to personal injury lawyers and accident and malpractice victims in Michigan.

Michigan Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements