Hurt? Suing over it may hinder your road to recovery

RT says:

10:33am | 10/08/09

I think there’s two reasons people sue for damages 1. money and 2. revenge. To some people, the latter reason takes precedence. Just take the recent case of a man who sued an ex-girlfriend to retrieve a car she claimed was a gift. The case cost much more than the car was worth, but one of them won.

pete m says:

11:03am | 10/08/09

Having worked as a pi lawyer for 15 + years, a few comments:

1. the process encourages people to complain about their injuries and consequences, meaning they keep reliving the incident, and they get the inkling the louder they complain the better off they’ll be in dollar terms.

2. genuinely hurt people who get treated like fraudsters then make sure they fight for their reputation too.

3. RT - it isn’t revenge, but rather, a sense of justice.  Scoff all you like, but people have a wired in sense of others getting away with it, and so they take action.

4. I know many who don’t claim but have bad suffering - they just don’t bother anyone with it.  I wonder how the stats would be with this taken into account.

5. Many badly injured people don’t just lose jobs or social activities, but marriages too.  Some go bankrupt, try suicide etc.  Try recovering from a fracture while your loved ones disappear from your life.

6. the money NEVER makes up for the pain and inconvenience of the injuries.  Not 1 client I have had has ever wished for the injuries and compo over no injuries.  This isn’t a lotto win.  Insurers make damn sure, as they should, that claims are genuine.  Sure there are frauds around, but don’t tarnish the genuine victims with that brush.

I wholly agree imporvements to various schemes are needed, especially at the coal face of rehabilitation delivery.  The sooner people can have a rehab plan approved and working, the sooner they can get back to work / life.

stephen says:

12:06pm | 10/08/09

Probably the only way the proletariat can realize their God, i.e. money from heaven.

Jay says:

02:58pm | 10/08/09

Stephen, your classism is showing…

RT says:

03:08pm | 10/08/09

Pete M - so none of your clients has ever told you that they want revenge against, or to punish, someone who caused them loss or damage. How surprising. They are different then from the families of victims of crime for whom no prison sentence is ever long enough. Of course, these people have a pure ‘sense of justice’ too and revenge never enters into it, right? Look, I’m not looking down on anyone, I admit I’d probably be the same. But let’s call it what it is.

Bitten says:

02:19pm | 14/08/09

Um, I don’t think there’s really any amazing thing being identified by these studies. People who blame others for everything that happens to them have given away their power. Someone did something to them, someone has to pay. I can’t cope, I’ve got no energy, I feel despondent just thinking about ‘what if that hadn’t happened to me’. Wah wah wah. The rest of the population has the ‘suck-it-up’ gene in spades and we just jump in and enjoy life, to the full, we fall down and WE PICK OURSELVES BACK UP. I could right now be wailing into my hanky about the fact that I was sexually harrassed at my old job. I could have sued. Why didn’t I? Because I can suck it up, princesses. I told the firm owners, said I won’t work with this troll ever ever ever, you need to make sure you are protected as the employer from this creep because he will do it again and the next person will probably sue you. I kept my job, the creep left for ‘mutual reasons’ and I worked at the firm for 3 years. So what is it about me that means I don’t sue for an actionable matter and Sally Sob-Story does? I guess I’m just not a ‘victim’.

Al says:

06:38pm | 20/08/09

I would have thought they dont recover as well because after they have gone thru all the crap of so called justice and even win in a legitimate case, they are still left with nothing as thier solicitor walks off with the majority of the money anyway, after the personal costs are taken into account they are worse off than where they started from. To not have an understanding of what the law is about and expect justice is bound to be a depressing realisation

Tina says:

03:21pm | 17/09/09

I’d like to leave a message to “Bitten”. I was homeless at the age of thirteen, raped at fifteen and while I was at home I was physically bashed and emotionally abused for years. I moved 200km’s from home and lived on the streets of Melbourne until I got my first job at age fourteen in a fish and chip shop. I fell flat on my face and got up again thousands of times and I never once became the “VICTIM”. I put myself through high school and even managed University. 7 years ago I had a motor vehicle accident which left me unable to walk properly from the pain. I still have excruciating headaches and blurred vision every day and my arms and legs are in pain so much they go numb if i sit or stand for too long. Besides chronic pain, I now suffer from other incurable, chronic illnesses brought on by the medication I was on. For six of those years, people all around me including my doctors told me “it’s from anxiety and depression”. I was telling them I’m not depressed, but that THEY are making me feel that way. Basically telling me it’s all in my head. No Doctor bothered to take any x-rays or anything to that effect even though I begged them. My own Husband, Sister, Friends and Family turned against me all the while i was getting more and more depressed while I was “SUCKING IT UP!” I pressed on as best I could bleeding from my ass. Finally I met a GP (God bless his soul) whom decided to investigate further with x-rays and MRI’s and found that my spine was broken and needs fusion, among other nerve damage in my shoulders, neck, arms, feet and hands. My own body had literally eaten up discs, bone and tissue and pancaked nerves in my spine over the 6 years of living as a hermit afraid to leave the house. I couldn’t suck it up, and I don’t believe you could either given the same circumstances. I’ve lost many a support network since then and three babies, but I still have my Husband by my side. Just. Now I sue for my daughter, she’s three and has to fetch my crutches every morning. She calls out at nighttime “are you alright mamma?” every time I cry out in pain when I need to turn in bed.
Bitten, Just by mentioning that you were harassed at work in the past to make your point, you’re (how did you put it?) WAH, WAH, WAHing in my pounding ears and making my head hurt even more.
You’re damn right I’m suing. Not because of those negligent Doctors or because the elderly lady wasn’t wearing her glasses when she decided to go for a drive that afternoon and failed to give way, or because I’m a sook but because I will suffer for the rest of my life and so will my girl. I can’t even play most of the games she wants to play with me. I would like to pay off my house, which I would have done if that fateful day hadn’t happened, so I can send her to a good school and provide for her a childhood which I missed. So she NEVER has to feel like a victim or is put in that position by someone who tells her to “suck it up.”
By the way you express yourself, you sound just like the Doctors and others whom didn’t do their research properly.
We don’t recover as quickly because no amount of money will compensate for my dead babies, or the marital stress, or the pain, or the time a child has to miss out on playing with mum.
I just hope for your sake you don’t believe in Karma.

Dale says:

09:05am | 30/11/09

Go Tina!  Although our situations differ there are times when we FIGHT for every inch of our existence, especially when families are the unwitting victims as well. In my case, I had worked in the welfare arena for 2 1/2 years with a very difficult client with whom I had made wonderful progress. Then we had a new manager (woman) appointed as the House Manager who just happened to be a close friend of the Managing Director and she changed the roster 5 times in 2 months, each time giving me less hours and less access to penalty shifts. She appointed a group of casual staff as permanent staff and gave the majority of my shifts to the new staff (inexperienced) and in the end I was losing about $700 a fortnight in wages. After fruitless discussions with her I decided to try and work in other community houses, but could not achieve the income I had lost. I then developed what I thought was a heart attack one day at work and was hospitalised for 4 days. The cardiologist said that despite having a history of cardiac problems, he couldn’t fing anything wrong from a heart point of view. He then asked if I had any issues in my life that I was worrying about and I explained my work situation and he said he believed that I could be suffering from stress and depression and this in turn was causing the physical symptoms. Long story short, I am now waiting for Workers Compensation payments to start (with the inevitable delays) just as we head into Christmas, and I intend to sue my employer for WorkPlace Bullying and Disability Discrimination. Why? Because when you mess with my wellbeing and my income, you mess with my family and I won’t tolerate that interference under any circumstances. The industrial laws are in place for this reason - to protect the worker from bullying and discrimination by self-important idiots who think that a stroke of a pen or a dismissive attitude can turn themselves into demi-gods. Well so sorry Jan, not in my case. BTW, I’m 57, support a wife and student son and my former boss was about 30. Lots more detail to this saga, but it would take months of writing to go through it all.