A Virginia Beach/Norfolk, VA Personal Injury Attorney’s Advice About Permanent And Serious Injury

As a 23 year veteran of personal injury litigation in South Hampton Roads Virginia I know how to make sure to try to get every last dollar from the insurance companies for my clients who have been hurt by somebody else’s fault. One of the key tools in a serious accident case is to try to use the American Medical Association’s Guide to Permanent Partial Impairment. The AMA Guide to impairment is commonly used in the context of work place accidents and workmen’s compensation. However it can be a great tool to explaining and describing the nature and severity of a client’s injuries after a car or truck wreck in Virginia.

The main group of doctors known as the AMA publishes a book which explains to doctors how to rate the impairments of patients after they have had some serious injury that has resulted in a back surgery or joint operation like a shoulder or knee procedure. The doctor goes through the book and analyzes, sometimes with the help of a physical therapist, the limitations in things like range of motion to show how much the person has lost use of their total body compared to how they were prior to the injury. This results in a score that will describe the extent of injury to the person’s body parts. Let’s say their upper left extremity, which is the upper left arm and shoulder, or the left lower extremity which would be your left hip, knee, ankle, and foot. If there are multiple injuries the 2 or more injuries are combined into a single score which describes the impairment to whole person. If your scores end up being more than 5%, they are highly significant.

I have had great success in arguing for more favorable jury verdicts in Virginia by using the AMA guide to permanent partial impairment by explaining to the jury that the client has suffered a loss of say 10% of their whole person and 15% of the use of their arm. The very definitions of these impairments show that it is permanent and serious and documented objectively by a doctor.

The Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Hampton, VA personal injury law firm, Cooper Hurley, handles automobile, truck, and motorcycle injuries as well as wrongful death, railroad injury cases and medical malpractice. John Cooper and Jim Hurley have over 40 years of combined experience in handling auto injury accident claims. Attorney John Cooper has been named to Virginia “Super Lawyers” since 2010. Cooper Hurley represents people hurt in accidents in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News and throughout VA, and always put the best interests of our clients first. The firm is recognized by other lawyers as “AV” by Martindale-Hubbell, a national attorney rating service, for our top level of legal skill and highest ethical standards. Our motto is: “Your Injury. Our fight.” If you need help or advice about a serious injury, please call us at (757) 455 -0077 or contact us through this website.