If you’ve been injured in a car accident and have sustained minor impact soft tissue (aka/MIST) injuries, you will likely soon discover that you are going to need a personal injury attorney to help you settle your case fairly. The reason for this is that insurance companies act on the mistaken idea that such injuries are not very serious and therefore, not worth a lot of money.
MIST cases typically arise when the property damage to the car is anywhere between $1,000 and $2,500. The defendant insurance companies are known to flag such cases and frequently offer very little to settle a person’s injury claim, despite the real level of injury.
How insurance companies respond to a MIST claim
If you’re in a car accident with minor property damage and you go to a doctor who diagnoses you with a soft tissue injury, we recommend that you not try to settle the case yourself with the insurance company. The insurance company will likely downplay the injury and give you a low-ball offer. If you then go to a personal injury lawyer, it will be much harder for them to get the insurance company to budge after their initial offer. Before that happens, you should first contact an experienced personal injury attorney who knows the games insurance companies play.
The logic of the insurance company is this: “If there wasn’t a lot of property damage, then the person could not possibly be badly injured.” This is an absolute fallacy.
What types of injuries are MIST injuries?
If you’ve not broken a bone in a personal injury accident, you’ve likely sustained soft tissue damage, i.e., any injury to a soft part of the body, such as tendons, muscles and ligaments. These types of injuries, which include whiplash, sprains, strains, contusions, head trauma and nerve damage, can be very painful and sometimes even crippling.
A 2005 study conducted by CJ Centeno, M. Freeman and WL Elkins revealed that variables such as stiffness and elasticity of vehicles, the seat design, the occupant mass, the position of the occupants, and the vehicle dynamics are not taken into account in MIST cases. They concluded that there is no direct correlation between a change in velocity and the risk of serious injury.
Head trauma, nerve damage, sprains and strains can be severely painful, as well as debilitating. One study reported that over a span of 15.5 years, 70% of all the patients of low-impact accidents who were followed continued to have symptoms (headaches, back, neck, and leg pain, etc.).
What compensation most MIST victims will need
Since MIST injuries can be serious, victims will probably need to seek compensation for the following:
- Medical Expenses: ER care, follow-up care, any surgery, prescription costs, long-term injury care.
- Loss wages
- Pain and suffering for both the physical pain and the emotional trauma stemming from the accident.
What should you do following your accident?
We always advise our clients to seek immediate medical attention after an accident, no matter how minor the crash may seem. It can be several days, or even months after the car crash when soft tissue injuries symptoms start to appear. Failure to seek medical attention at the beginning will feed the insurance company’s line that you weren’t even hurt enough to seek medical care, thus making it more difficult to get you fairly compensated. You deserve to be compensated so don’t delay.
If you’ve been injured in a motor vehicle accident with a diagnosis of MIST injuries, please contact us. We are experienced car crash attorneys with a great deal of experience handling soft tissue injury cases.
If you have any questions about this article or any other questions related to personal injury law, please call us toll free at 1-800-LAW-1333. Our personal injury consultations are always free.
If you are ever the victim of someone else’s negligence or carelessness and are injured in any kind of accident, please give us a call.
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