Had a new client in late last week. He had been hit by a State Farm insured in a car accident. He has a mild brain injury and suffered orthopedic injuries.

Know why he called a lawyer?

He tells me that’s it is because, just after his accident, he was contacted by a State Farm adjuster who told him that ‘its lots better just to deal with me [the adjuster] directly, that way we can just cut out the lawyer’s fee altogether.

Client was smart enough to smell a rat. He had not even thought that he might need a lawyer till the claims rep told him to avoid seeing one!

You may be able to settle you case without a lawyer. Its usually not very smart (I was going to write “it’s usually pretty dumb”) to settle you case without at least speaking to a lawyer and becoming as educated as you can about the claims process.

Is the insurance company outright lying to you (such as “if you don’t send us your form we are closing your file and you won’t be able to claim anything”) or are they “forgetting” to tell you things you may be entitled to [an insurance company will never tell you that Virginia law says that you may be entitle to punitive damages if the person who hit you was drunk.]

Do yourself a favor. If you’ve been hurt in Virginia while in a car accident, at the very least  read The Ultimate Guide to Virginia Car Accident Cases. 

This is a tragic situation which will cause the court to take another look at Virginia’s low cap on medical malpractice damages. (See, Why Most Malpractice Victims Never Recover a Dime.)

Less than three years ago, Susan Anne Catherine Torres’ birth made medical history after she was delivered by a mother who was brain-dead and kept on life support in order to sustain the pregnancy.

Now a medical malpractice suit that was filed against one of the mother’s doctors has raised legal questions regarding the degree to which the obligations and liabilities of a doctor in treating a pregnant woman also extend to the unborn child.

Jason Torres, Susan Anne’s father and Susan Michelle Torres’ husband, filed suit a year ago in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria. He seeks damages of $15 million against Walter Dixon, the emergency-room physician who treated Susan Michelle at Inova Alexandria Hospital in 2005.

The suit alleges that not only is Dixon responsible for the death of the mother, he is also responsible for the baby’s death. The child died five weeks after birth due to complications from premature delivery.

Torres alleges that the symptoms indicating a more serious problem were dismissed by the doctor as “morning sickness.” The symptoms included memory lapses in which Susan Michelle was unable to recognize her husband sitting right beside her, which a nurse witnessed. According to Torres’ attorney, bleeding on the brain would have been revealed through further tests.

The same day Susan Michelle was discharged, she fell into a coma from a brain hemorrhage caused by melanoma and never regained consciousness. She was around 14 weeks pregnant at the time. She was kept on life support for three months and Susan Anne Catherine Torres was born 13 weeks prematurely. Susan Michelle was removed from life support and died the next day.

On April 14, Virginia state police reported three deaths due to personal injuries received in car accidents on the state’s roads.

On April 12, 23-year-old Lawrenceville resident Latoya Hardy died at the scene of a Brunswick County crash. According to police, she was driving her car north on Route 603 when it ran off the right side of the road and she over corrected, causing it to go off the left side of the road into a ditch. The vehicle then overturned and ejected her. According to police, she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.

Police also reported the death of 27-year-old Palmyra resident James Poole on April 11 at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville after a Fluvanna County crash on April 6.

According to police, Poole was driving his car east on Route 6 when it crossed the center line and struck a westbound SUV. Police said he was wearing his seatbelt.

On April 7, 62-year-old Sperryville James Johnson died at Fairfax Inova Hospital after a Rappahannock County crash on April 2. Johnson was traveling west on U.S. 211 when his car ran off the left side of the road, overturning several times, according to state police. Police say he was wearing his seatbelt.

Those three fatalities brought the total number of road deaths in Virginia in 2008 to 218, compared to 242 at the same time in 2007.