Some jurors in accident cases believe in the myth that property damage equals injury. This means that jurors likely will believe that unless your vehicle sustained substantial property damage, you were not injured. Ironically, this commonly-held belief is refuted entirely by the body of medical and scientific evidence that has been developed over years regarding accidents and injuries.
For example, in a rear end collision where a car “rear ends” a truck that has a trailer hitch, often most of the property damage will be on the car that rear ended the truck. This is why it is so important in these types of cases that your attorney promptly hires an expert to examine your vehicle to collect evidence that can be used to explain to the jury why one car has much more property damage the other. Recently, our firm worked on a case where there was over $4,000 in property damage to the car that rear ended our client’s truck. However, there was only $500-$600 in property damage to our client’s truck, which had a trailer hitch. Because the car rear ended our client’s truck right on the trailer hitch, and that trailer hitch is attached to the frame of the vehicle, damage was far less to the truck than to the car who struck the truck.
