Bicycle Accident Claim Value

Answer:

One of the natural things people wonder about with bicycle cases is what the value of their claim is. “I’ve been injured by a driver or a bicycle product that was inappropriately manufactured. What am I going to recover for that?” That’s a natural question. The issue is you have to look at all the components.

There are some easy components to consider. We call those the economic losses – the lost wages or the cost of your medical expense, or even the cost of replacing your bicycle or the clothes you were wearing when you got hit by the car. Those things are pretty straightforward and we can evaluate those easily. There are more complex losses involved, however—the freedom that was taken from you to choose to go for a ride and the impacts that it’s had on you, for example. These are what we call non-economic damages. When you got hurt and were in the hospital, people don’t ask you, “Hey, how much did your medical care cost?” They ask you, “How are you doing? When are you going to get back to it? When are we going to see you on a ride again?” Those are the important things to help evaluate. Figuring those things out is complex. Everybody’s different. Everybody has a different lifestyle and different things that impact them and different ways that specific injuries have impacted them.

Evaluating a bicycle case is an art. It’s one of the things that we as practicing trial attorneys in Idaho work on. We work on these types of questions all the time when we’re trying to evaluate what we think a jury will do with your situation, and that’s something we have to bring to bear with our experience. We’re happy to talk to you about it. We probably can’t give you a value of your claim over the telephone, and if any lawyer actually wants to give you a value of your claim over the telephone, you should run away from that attorney. Talk to somebody who’s willing to do the work it takes to really understand what’s happened to you and really understand the value of your bicycle accident injury claim in Idaho. It can be different in Boise or Coeur d’Alene or Pocatello but we can handle them all. Give us a call. We’re happy to talk to you. We always like talking to cyclists.