What does the death of football player Korey Stringer tell you about what your case is worth?
Seven+ years ago football player Korey Stringer died from heat related problems while practicing with the Minnesota Vikings. ESPN just reported that the case against the NFL was settled.
While his widow likely received a workers' compensation death benefit, like many of the cases that we deal with, there were also "third party" lawsuits that were filed. That means that the widow sued alleging negligence against someone other than the employer for causing the death. We do this all of the time, usually when a client of ours is hurt in a car accident or construction injury that was someone elses fault. You can't sue your employer for negligence, but the rest of the world is fair game.
What is telling about the Stringer case is that when it was first filed her attorneys asked for $100 million. Now no one is saying what the case settled for, but it's clear that it wasn't anywhere near that figure. Mrs. Stringer herself even admitted in the article that the huge demand was to get the attention of the responsible parties and make changes into how they deal with practicing in the heat.
We are workers' compensation attorneys that help people with Illinois work injuries anywhere in IL via our statewide network of attorneys. Contact us and we will answer your questions or find the right lawyer for your situation.
The relevance of this for Illinois workers' compensation claims or personal injury lawsuits is that you shouldn't listen to the astronomical numbers that get floated about. If a lawyer is telling you that your case is worth $100 million you should ask him/her how many cases settled in Illinois over the last five years for even more than $10 million. The answer is not too many, probably less than 20 and in no case did an individual come even close to $100 million.
For work injuries, we settled what we believe is the largest workers' compensation claim in Illinois ever and that was for $800,000.00. That case was extremely unusual and involved a young man who made a lot of money and could no longer work.
So the lesson is to ignore the talk and have an honest conversation about realities.
