Why You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About Filing a Personal Injury Claim

“I don’t want to sue them.”

I hear some version of this more often than you might expect.

Someone gets hurt because a friend’s porch railing gives way. A neighbor’s dog bites them. They slip on a dangerous set of stairs at a business they have visited for years. Or maybe they are injured in a car accident caused by someone they know.

They need medical treatment. They miss work. Bills start piling up. Yet when the subject of making a personal injury claim comes up, they hesitate.

“I like them.”
“It was an accident.”
“I don’t want to take their money.”
“I’m not the kind of person who sues people.”

Good. Most of my clients aren’t either.

Filing an Insurance Claim Does Not Make You a Bad Person

There is a strange stigma attached to personal injury claims in this country. Somewhere along the way, we decided that asking to be compensated after someone else’s negligence caused an injury was greedy.

Insurance companies have probably not lost much sleep over this development.

The truth is much less dramatic. Most personal injury cases are not about emptying your neighbor’s checking account because his dog bit you. They involve an insurance policy purchased specifically to protect people when accidents happen.

Homeowners buy insurance. Drivers buy insurance. Businesses buy insurance. Landlords buy insurance.

Why?

Because humans are remarkably good at accidentally hurting one another.

Insurance exists because accidents happen and sometimes those accidents cause real financial and physical harm.

You can like the person who caused your injury. You can believe they are a wonderful human being. You can understand that they never intended to hurt you.

And you can still have $40,000 in medical bills.

Those things can all be true at the same time.

Remember the McDonald’s Coffee Lady?

If you want to understand why people feel guilty about legitimate personal injury claims, consider one of the most famous lawsuits in American history.

You probably know the story.

An elderly woman spilled McDonald’s coffee in her lap and sued because the coffee was hot. A jury gave her millions of dollars. America collectively rolled its eyes.

Except that isn’t really what happened.

In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck was a passenger in a parked car when coffee purchased from a McDonald’s drive-through spilled into her lap. The coffee caused severe third-degree burns, and she required multiple hospitalizations and skin grafts.

This was not someone complaining that her latte ruined her pants.

Evidence at trial showed that McDonald’s served its coffee at temperatures approaching 190 degrees and had received previous reports of customers suffering burns. Why so hot? Because it was cheaper to heat bad coffee than to pay for good beans.

The jury found McDonald’s liable but also found Liebeck partially responsible. It reduced her compensatory damages accordingly and awarded punitive damages against McDonald’s. The punitive award was later reduced by the judge, and the case eventually settled for a confidential amount.

But that isn’t the story most people remember.

They remember: Lady spills hot coffee. Lady sues McDonald’s. Lady gets millions.

The case became shorthand for everything supposedly wrong with personal injury lawsuits.

And that caricature has been remarkably effective.

A Personal Injury Claim Is About Making Someone Whole

Personal injury law is not supposed to provide someone with a winning lottery ticket.

The purpose of compensatory damages is right there in the name: compensation.

If someone else’s negligence leaves you injured, the goal is to compensate you for what the injury has cost you.

That can include medical expenses, lost wages, future treatment, diminished earning capacity, pain, disability and other losses depending on the circumstances.

Money cannot undo an injury. I have yet to find the settlement check that can unbreak a spine or give someone back a year of their life spent in doctors’ offices.

It is simply the only tool our civil justice system has.

“But It Was an Accident.”

Of course it was.

If somebody deliberately runs you over with a Buick, we have an entirely different set of problems.

Personal injury cases generally arise because someone was negligent, not because they woke up that morning plotting to injure another person.

A driver looks at a text instead of the road. A property owner knows a handrail is loose and doesn’t repair it. A business fails to clean up a dangerous condition. A dog owner knows the dog has a history of aggression but doesn’t take appropriate precautions.

Nobody necessarily intended the injury.

Intent isn’t the point.

Responsibility is.

What If I Know the Person I Would Be Making a Claim Against?

This is where people become especially uncomfortable.

Maybe the accident happened at your sister-in-law’s house. Maybe your longtime neighbor caused the crash. Maybe the dog belongs to a friend.

You don’t want Thanksgiving dinner to turn into Exhibit A.

That is understandable.

But in many cases, the claim is ultimately handled and paid through insurance. That is precisely why people purchase liability coverage in the first place.

Making a legitimate claim does not mean declaring someone your mortal enemy. It means acknowledging that you were injured and asking the applicable insurance coverage to do the job it was purchased to do.

There may still be complicated personal dynamics, and every case is different. But refusing to make a claim does not make the medical bills disappear. It just changes who pays them.

Often, that person is you.

You Can Be a Nice Person and Still Protect Yourself

I have practiced personal injury law long enough to know that the people most worried about appearing greedy are rarely the people anyone needs to worry about.

They are usually uncomfortable because they don’t want conflict. They don’t want to hurt someone they care about. They don’t want to be perceived as opportunistic.

I understand that.

But there is nothing noble about absorbing the financial consequences of an injury someone else caused simply because you are afraid of what someone might think.

Insurance companies accepted premiums in exchange for accepting risk. When a covered loss happens, making a legitimate claim is not gaming the system.

It is using the system for exactly what it was designed to do. It also protects others. McDonalds doesn’t sell its coffee as hot. Dangerous dogs wind up inside fenced yards. Snow gets shoveled and ice removed.

If you were injured because of someone else’s negligence in St. Louis or elsewhere in Missouri and you are unsure whether you even have a claim, talk to an experienced personal injury lawyer before deciding you don’t.

You may ultimately decide not to pursue it.

But make that decision after you understand your rights, not because a distorted story about a cup of coffee made an entire generation afraid of being “that person.”