Word often creates temporary working copies of files that are open that are hidden by default and sometimes left behind, you might be able to use an old one of those to recovery some of the data.
To see invisible files, open the directory where you expect this file to live, got o the Tools menu, then Folder Options, then the View tab, and where it says "Hidden files and folders" make sure 'Show hidden files and folders' is checked. Press Ok.
If you're lucky, some files with gray names have shown up, and at least one of them has almost the same name as the .DOC you're trying to recover, except with a tilde or some other funky character as the first letter in the name. Copy that to another physical drive and try to open it.
If that doesn't work, in general, try to minimize how much data to write to this disk until you've had a chance to run chkdsk or some other disk check utility to try to recover chunks of the file. Chkdsk acts like a broadsword when a scalpel would be more appropriate, but it might be able to create 'FILE.001' and 'FILE.002' etc in the root of your drive with chunks of raw data that might have your missing case info.
Good luck, Seagoon!
