Why You Shouldn’t Ignore the Damage – Even If It Looks Small
Ask any Maryland trial attorney doing personal injury litigation and they will tell you - Minor property damage cases equal big problems. Parking lot accidents, low-speed rear-end impacts at a red light, and other scenarios that produce minor property damage are typically met with the same response by the insurance industry: “How can your client claim to have been injured in this minor accident?”
The Insurance Industry’s Flawed Logic
The severity of a collision carries a frustratingly outsized role in personal injury practice. In a minor impact case, the other insurance carrier will likely deny the claim without knowing the client’s injuries. GEICO, for instance, routinely sends out a denial letter based on low impact if the victim’s estimated property damage is below $1,000, a completely arbitrary benchmark. In court, the defense team will bring photos of the involved vehicles to show “how minor” the event was.
No Medical Evidence Supports This Assumption
But here’s the thing - Privately, they KNOW there’s no medical science behind this stance. Over the years, we have crossed paths with many “defense” doctors, frequently board-certified surgeons, whose allegiance is firmly with the insurance companies that repeatedly retain them as courtroom experts. Most of them will admit that they know of NO medical evidence linking the amount of property damage with the severity of injury by a vehicle occupant. When pressed, they will acknowledge that a patient can have little injury after a severe accident, and substantial injury after a minor accident.
Juror Bias and the “Frivolous Lawsuit” Myth
Despite lacking a medical basis, the fiction that low impact equals no injury/minor injury persists. Of course, it’s not just the insurance industry that holds onto this belief. Maryland residents carry this belief into the courtroom when serving as jurors. They have been conditioned by decades of corporate narrative about “frivolous lawsuits”. They are willing to view the plaintiff as an opportunist, not a victim, in cases where the impact seems minor. They make the fundamental mistake of concluding that because “most people” would not suffer meaningful injury from a minor impact case, no one does, and they refuse to consider that the plaintiff could have been hurt. Further, this commonly held view contradicts express Maryland law, which holds that “the fact that an injury would have been less serious if inflicted upon another person should not affect the amount of damages to which the plaintiff may be entitled.” 
Recently, after a year of litigation, our firm resolved a case for a substantial sum where the client claimed years of persistent headaches and cognitive issues stemming from a rear-end impact at a red light. The early stance by the defense was that the impact was minor, neither vehicle required a tow truck, and both parties drove away under their own power. It took significant litigation resources to persuade the defense that the impact was just hard enough to cause the driver’s head to slam back into the headrest and set all the claimed injuries in motion. Another client required shoulder surgery after a seemingly minor rear-end impact at a stoplight, a claim initially resisted by the insurance carrier. A third client needed a series of painful and costly cervical injections to minimize chronic neck pain after a “modest” rear-end impact at a red light, the defendant claiming his foot just slipped off the brake and he rolled forward at low speed.
Speak With an Experienced Maryland Car Accident Attorney
We KNOW from 35 years of experience that upstanding, sincere, healthy people can and do get hurt in minor impact traffic events, and that our civil justice system is supposed to make them whole. Do YOU believe otherwise? If you are in a minor collision and a day later your neck is on fire and you require medical care, are you prepared to abandon your claim because the impact was minor and you feel no one will believe you? If so, the insurance industry has won and you have lost.
