“Don’t take a good case, try to make it a great case, and turn it into a bad case.”    Richard Cook 

I never take on a new client without sharing the quote above with them.  The most valuable component of any personal injury case is the client’s credibility… period, end of case. If you exaggerate or stretch your claim beyond the bounds of your evidence, then your client will lose credibility, devalue your client’s claim and lose their case.

The number one tactic most defense attorneys use to undermine a personal injury case, is to encourage the injured client to overstate or exaggerate their claim while under oath in a deposition or to omit their history of a past injury to the same portion of the body or to hide a prior collision or claim. The client thinks, “Why tell them, they may never find out.”  However, they almost always do. The defense argues, “Why did your client do these things (they said they couldn’t do)?  Simple… because they don’t have a legitimate claim.”

Honesty is not just the best moral policy, it is also the best economic policy when it comes to the value of a personal injury case.  

So don’t forget the quote and don’t let your client forget it either.