Michael Mazal, a litigation attorney with the firm discusses the difficulty of conveying the frustration of injuries to people who have not actually experienced them. Here is his honest experience after a recent auto accident.

One of the toughest jobs for a lawyer, on any Orange County accident case, is helping their client convey to the defense attorney, the insurance adjuster for the Defendant, and ultimately the jury, just what it means to live with their pain on a daily basis.

While everyone has experienced a headache or sustained a cut, for many injuries most of us simply have no frame of reference to aid our understanding. For example, it is notoriously difficult to explain the effects of a back or neck injury to someone who has never hurt their back or neck. If you hurt your elbow, you can avoid moving your arm. A cut or a bruise is painful, but heals.

When one severely injures their back or neck, relief is much more difficult to come by. Even though I've dealt with hundreds of clients who had sustained neck or back injuries, I can't say that I fully understood what they were going through until I experienced it myself.

I was recently broadsided on my way to work by a driver who had run a red light. While I felt fine the day of the accident, within a few days I began to experience crippling lower back spasms. It literally hurt to do anything. But, if you look at my x-ray, and nothing is broken. If someone looks at my back, there isn't any blood gushing out, and I do not have any obvious signs of injury.

Very often with neck or back injuries, only the testimony of the injured party is available to fully explain the injuries. The task of the attorney is to help the client tell their story, and unless the person listening appreciates the truth of the description, or has "walked that mile", it is hard for them to really comprehend the injury. I hope if they have not walked that path, they will remember that those who do, are suffering greatly.