When a car accident occurs, drivers often react to the impending collision by firmly gripping the steering wheel. The impact along with airbag deployment often leads to hand and wrist injuries. A serious and/or permanent hand or wrist injury can significantly affect a person’s quality of life. An experienced car accident lawyer can convince an insurance company that the cost of a hand or wrist injury is quite high in terms of both physical disability and pain and suffering. Here’s what you should know if you’ve suffered a hand or wrist injury in a car accident and how to go about getting a broken hand car accident settlement.
The Complexities of the Human Hand
The human hand is intricately composed of bones, tendons, muscles, tissues, and ligaments. It’s easy to take the fine motor skills allowed to us by our hands for granted. From simple actions like typing on a keyboard or holding a pen to more complex activities such as buttoning a shirt or combing our hair, the dexterity of our hands is essential for daily life.
Whether it’s a hand or wrist injury, the impact of a hand injury can be significant, leaving us reliant on others for even the most basic tasks. Some injuries may heal with time, but others like tendinitis, broken fingers, distal radius fractures, torn ligaments, or even amputation can have long-lasting effects and require ongoing treatment and rehabilitation.
Common Wrist and Hand Injuries Following a Car Accident
Hand injuries can seem minor and many do not take them as seriously as other more severe injuries. But hand injuries can significantly affect someone’s quality of life as well as their ability to work.
Common hand injuries after a car accident include:
- Finger fractures
- Metacarpal fractures
- Finger dislocation
- Overextended ligaments or tendons
- Extensor tendon injury in hand
- Extensor tendons lie next to the bone on the back of the hands and fingers. In a traumatic accident like a car crash, the tendons may rip from their attachment to the bone.
- Carpal bone fractures
- Wrist sprains
How Much Is Your Hand Pain Worth?
The average jury award for hand and wrist injury cases is $630,000. The median judgment for the same injuries is $70,000. This wide variance in compensation shows why compensation calculators are not an accurate representation of what your accident settlement will look like.
Why Car Accident Settlement Values Vary – Even With the Same Hand Injury
No two settlements—even for identical injuries—are exactly alike. Comparisons to other settlement figures can often be misleading. Personal injury case settlements vary widely, especially when it comes to more complex injury cases involving hands and wrists. Often the full value of a possible settlement from a hand or wrist injury from a car accident can only be determined after a full range-of-motion or impairment report is received from a specialist.
An insurance adjuster may not be willing to take into account how much a hand or wrist injury impacts someone’s life, perhaps permanently. This is why a personal injury lawyer can be extremely helpful in getting the proper settlement amount. Insurance settlements should be tailored to each victim. The circumstances of your accident and injury are likely to be quite different from another person’s. For example, a person’s line of work may be mildly or severely affected by a hand or wrist injury.
When you talk directly with a car accident lawyer, they will take into account all the variables at play to determine what may be realistic for a hand or wrist injury. Many variables will affect how much you can get out of a broken hand car accident settlement.
The following factors may affect your settlement amount:
- Recovery time
- Permanence of the injury
- Your line of work and recreational activities
- Medical costs, including surgery and physical therapy
- Missed work during treatment and recovery
- Diminished quality of life
- Costs of help around the house for tasks you can no longer do
Instances that may decrease your compensation include:
- If you were partially at fault for the accident
- Lack of documentation of injuries
- Lack of evidence
- Lack of proper insurance coverage
- If your injury is minor and heals quickly
Contact Sally Morin Personal Injury Lawyers – Car Accident Law Firm
Sally Morin personal injury lawyers help accident victims achieve full and fair settlements for their injuries and have been doing so for many years. We have extensive experience representing people who were injured, sometimes severely or permanently, through no fault of their own. If you have sustained a broken hand in a car accident or other type of injury from a car collision that wasn’t your fault, contact the personal injury lawyers at Sally Morin 24/7 at 877-380-8852. We will make sure you are awarded every penny of compensation that you are entitled to. Request your free consultation today.
