$155KLow-speed collision with soft tissue injuries

Our client was rear-ended in stop-and-go traffic at roughly 12 miles per hour. There was under a thousand dollars of visible damage to her bumper, and the insurer’s first position was that no injury could result from an impact that minor.

She had cervical and lumbar strain with myofascial pain that persisted well past the point her treating physician expected it to resolve.

Low-property-damage cases are lost on the photograph, so we did not fight the photograph. We had a biomechanical engineer establish the occupant kinematics for her seating position and headrest height, showing the forces her neck actually absorbed regardless of what the bumper looked like.

We also documented the treatment gap the insurer intended to exploit — a six-week break caused by a lapse in her health coverage, not by recovery — with records from her insurer rather than her own testimony.

The claim settled for $155K, a multiple of the insurer’s opening offer, after the biomechanical report and the coverage records were produced.

Her symptoms have largely resolved with continued therapy. The settlement covered her treatment, the therapy course she had deferred, and her lost income.