West Virginia Injuries Glossary

Legal and insurance terms explained plainly

Can someone else take over the right to sue an insurance company for bad faith? Yes. An assignment of bad faith rights is an agreement where the person or business insured...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-23

bad faith penalties

Insurers and defense lawyers sometimes use this phrase as if it means a routine fine that automatically gets added whenever a claim is denied or delayed. They may also suggest...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-23

chain of custody

You'll usually see it in a police report, lab paperwork, a lawyer's letter, or a court filing saying someone is "challenging the chain of custody" or "establishing chain of...

GLOSSARY 2026-04-03

clinical decision support

You just got a letter that says a hospital used "clinical decision support" during your care, and now you are trying to figure out whether that helped, failed, or was ignored....

GLOSSARY 2026-04-01

clinical pathway

You just got a letter that says your care will follow a "clinical pathway," and it can sound like a fixed route with no room for questions. A clinical pathway is a structured...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-24

cognitive bias in diagnosis

You may see this in a medical record review, denial letter, or expert report as phrases like "anchoring," "premature closure," or "confirmation bias" during the diagnostic...

GLOSSARY 2026-04-02

delayed diagnosis

Money and case value often turn on timing: when a serious condition is found late, treatment can become harder, more expensive, and less effective. A delayed diagnosis happens...

GLOSSARY 2026-04-02

diagnostic imaging error

Insurance companies and defense lawyers may use this phrase to make a missed fracture, tumor, bleed, or spinal injury sound like a minor judgment call instead of a serious...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-26

differential diagnosis

A dangerous mistake can happen when symptoms are treated like a quick guess instead of a careful process: a serious condition gets missed, treatment goes the wrong way, and the...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-31

excess verdict

People often mix up an excess verdict with an excess judgment. They are close, but not identical. An excess verdict is the jury's award that comes in higher than the...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-23

failure to diagnose

A healthcare provider did not identify a medical condition when reasonable care likely would have. "Did not identify" can mean missing the condition entirely, dismissing...

GLOSSARY 2026-04-02

failure to warn

The worst mistake people make is assuming a dangerous product case only exists if the item was broken. Insurance companies and defense lawyers use that assumption against...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-22

false negative

A missed abnormal finding can cost money, health, and legal leverage because treatment may be delayed while a condition worsens. In a claim, that delay can affect the value of...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-28

index of suspicion

A low index of suspicion can be the difference between a patient being sent home and a dangerous condition being caught before it gets much worse. The phrase means a...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-25

loss of chance doctrine

You just got a letter that says a doctor's delay "reduced the patient's chance of survival," and now the phrase shows up in medical records, insurance papers, or a lawyer's...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-29

misdiagnosis

What trips people up most is that a wrong diagnosis is not automatically medical malpractice. A clinician can make a difficult judgment call and still meet the accepted...

GLOSSARY 2026-04-03

pathology misread

A pathology misread happens when a pathologist incorrectly interprets tissue, blood, or other lab samples and gives the wrong diagnosis, misses a disease, or reports normal...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-25

pattern and practice

What trips people up is this: one ugly claim decision usually is not enough. A pattern and practice means repeated conduct that shows a company is doing the same wrongful thing...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-23

preponderance of evidence

51% is the idea behind this standard: not absolute proof, just enough evidence to show something is more likely true than not. The phrase comes out of old English civil courts,...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-21

red flag symptom

Not every bad headache, fever, or bout of pain is a red flag symptom. The common mistake is thinking it means any severe complaint. What it actually means is a warning sign...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-27

referral delay

You just got a letter that says a specialist visit should have happened months earlier, and the phrase "referral delay" appears in the explanation. That usually means there was...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-25

screening guideline

Not a guarantee, a diagnosis, or a one-size-fits-all rule, a screening guideline is a medical recommendation about who should be tested for a disease, when testing should...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-28

unreasonable delay

Not every slow response is an unreasonable delay. Insurance claims can take some time when records are missing, injuries are still being evaluated, or the facts are genuinely...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-23

verdict

Does a verdict mean the case is finally over? Not always. The surprising part is that a verdict is the decision reached by a jury - or sometimes by a judge in a bench trial -...

GLOSSARY 2026-03-21