Some people think smoking is just an individual preference. But it’s a very big deal in serious personal injury cases.
Surgeons instruct their patients that they should not smoke while healing from surgery. However, many patients don’t follow their doctors’ advice. This can significantly reduce the value of their personal injury cases.
When injured persons smoke following a surgery not only to they run all the regular risks associated with smoking (lung cancer, etc.) they also slow down the healing process. The defense in a personal injury case will pick up and exploit this fact. It will argue strenuously throughout the case that the injured person’s decision to smoke has contributed to their damages and that they have “failed to mitigate” their losses.
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