This blog post covers a case report from our past history. We cover it here due to the unique nature of the injury, the insurer's denial of the claim until just before trial, and how we used our experience in complex traumatic injuries to prove our client's case.
Traumatic Heart Damage Personal Injury Lawyer
This case involved a sternum fracture with associated traumatic heart damage caused to a woman with no pre-existing heart problems as a result of motor vehicle collision in which the airbag did not deflate and she hit the steering wheel. She was diagnosed with heart muscle damage and sternum fracture with elevated cardiac lab results on the date of the collision after transport by ambulance. The client had two heart surgeries as a result of this damage. She also sustained a mild traumatic brain injury that caused a change in cognition to a person who had previously done her job without a problem for 30 years. In response to our request for settlement, the insurer offered $0 on this case.
During the litigation, the defendant ordered a records review and then a live insurance medical examination “IME” by a cardiologist. Despite the cardiologist telling the client that he didn’t understand why the insurer was contesting the case, the report generated by the IME doctor said that the client wasn’t injured in the crash and that the heart damage was caused by blood pressure that had been elevated before the crash.
The amount of defendant’s insurance policy limit ($250,000) was requested by our office. Defendant’s insurer refused to accept the offer, and made no counteroffer. In a mediation, defendant told plaintiff counsel to seek reduction of plaintiff’s medical bills and again made no offer. Plaintiff counsel DeShaw told the client to leave the mediation with him and that they were going to trial, since the insurer’s bad faith denial of the claim exposed the defendant to an excess verdict for an amount above his insurance policy. Please note that this was several years prior to the establishment of bad faith law by the Oregon Supreme Court in Moody v. Oregon Community Credit Union.
Traumatic Heart Damage Imaging
Portland personal injury lawyer, and former Doctor of Chiropractic, Aaron DeShaw, used the original advanced medical imaging DICOM files on the client and took screen shots of the 3D images from the files using a radiology program. (See below)
The image above shows the direction of force caused by the client's chest hitting the steering wheel, fracturing the sternum and causing damage to the area of the heart directly behind the fracture.
This image shows the area of the sternum fracture magnified for the insurance adjuster and defense lawyers.
These images demonstrated that the area of the heart damaged was directly behind the area of the sternum fractured in the crash as reported in the radiology report. These images were relayed to the defense, demonstrating that there would be no credible way to suggest that the heart damage wasn’t caused by the sternum fracture and the crash. DeShaw then hired a medical illustration company to create visual exhibits for the pending trial, which would be used by the expert cardiologist hired by our office.
Settlement Offer on a Traumatic Heart Injury Case
Shortly after this, approximately two weeks before trial, the insurer called our office and agreed to settle the claim for $500,000, twice the amount of the defendant’s insurance policy limit. Despite our reluctance to settle, our client accepted the offer.