Jury Verdicts, Damages, and Injury Valuation

Posted on Posted in Research Guides

It is important for a lawyer with an injured client to know what similar or same injuries have received in awards for Plaintiffs in order to best represent their client.

A great place to start is the library’s Jury Verdict & Damages Research Guide. Books, websites, and of course the offerings of Lexis and Westlaw are covered.

Here are some highlights:

  • Lexis has a great product called Verdict and Settlement Analyzer, which has filters for: Case resolution (plaintiff verdict, defense verdict, or settlement), Jurisdiction and County, Award Range, Injury, and Date. To get to this product, select ‘Verdict and Settlement Analyzer’ from the drop-down menu at the top left when signed into Lexis Advance.
  • Westlaw: Click ‘Jury Verdicts and Settlements’ (under the All Content link on the home page). Select jurisdiction or topic. The Advanced Search option has field searching. Some of the useful features here are the Injury field, summary field (contains age and sex of plaintiff), and text field (contains information on how the injury occurred, such as a motor vehicle accident). Useful post filters features include: Award range (from zero to 5 million+), date, topic, judge, law firm, and docket number.
  • JVR Personal Injury Handbooks in print in the reference section is another great resource in this area. Need to know the valuation of Hemiplegia in a 45 year old? How about the loss of an arm in a 21 year old? JVR Personal Injury Handbooks cover those and many more injury types.

 

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