Personal injury cases typically revolve around tangible costs like medical bills and lost wages; putting a dollar value on noneconomic losses such as pain and suffering can be more challenging to ascertain.
Insurance providers usually use a multiplier method to estimate their value; this involves adding up all the victim’s “special damages” and multiplying this figure by 1.5-5%. An experienced attorney may offer more insight than can be gained through such calculations.
Economic Damages
Economic damages refer to tangible losses such as medical bills and lost wages that can be more easily measured than other forms of personal injury damage such as pain and suffering. A lawyer will review pay stubs, expense receipts, medical records to identify all the financial costs related to your injury in order to calculate its value.
Calculating economic damages requires taking into account any time off work and reduced productivity caused by injuries. Any travel expenses to and from medical appointments should also be included as economic damages.
Occurring expenses that might be covered in your claim include expenses such as hiring a housekeeper to prepare meals or provide housekeeping assistance, personal care services such as in-home health aides or physical therapists, modifications made to your home or car to accommodate disabilities and the costs of prescription medication. Careful documentation of these expenses can increase their value; for instance keeping track of all receipts can prove that these were truly related to the injury sustained.
Your attorney can use several techniques to accurately value non-economic damages, which include pain and suffering losses that are harder to quantify, such as loss of enjoyment of life or emotional distress. A simple method for valuing these damages would be multiplying the total value of special or economic damages by an expected severity and duration factor (usually 1.5-5).
One approach for calculating general damages is known as the per diem method, in which your attorney uses expert testimony to establish a daily compensation rate that’s considered fair for noneconomic losses; then multiply this number of days that these losses occur with multiplicative factors applied accordingly.
General Damages
Personal injury damages are designed to provide compensation beyond financial losses associated with an accident, in terms of emotional distress and disruption caused by injuries or illness. Though this type of compensation can be harder to prove, an experienced attorney can assist in creating an impressive case to show both its full extent and how it has negatively impacted quality of life.
General damages are calculated similarly to special damages, although they take more subjective factors such as pain and suffering into account. An insurer will typically use your medical special damages and other losses (repair costs for damaged property or income lost due to an accident), multiply them by one to five multipliers (with higher multipliers for more serious injuries).
You should use an insurance adjuster’s estimate as a starting point to negotiate compensation for noneconomic losses, keeping in mind that it may not always be accurate; sometimes using higher or lower multipliers may better reflect how an injury has impacted you and how severe its effects have been.
In some instances, additional factors must be included such as how your injury has impacted the amount of time missed from work and any missed promotions or opportunities at work. You might also require including records that demonstrate you’ve experienced anxiety disorders or depression due to your injury – making detailed medical and psychiatric documentation critical in supporting your claim.
As is often the case in personal injury claims, damages must be calculated using formulas; however, some states impose caps on both special and general damages, which could limit how much can be recovered in court. Therefore, seeking legal guidance from an attorney with extensive personal injury experience is critical in order to maximize your chance of recovery.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages may seem like an afterthought to some, but they play a key role in the value of a personal injury claim. Punitive damages exist to punish defendants and deter similar conduct from occurring again in future incidents; their value depends upon both severity of injuries sustained by plaintiffs as well as how reckless or intentional their behavior was.
Personal injuries involve two distinct categories of damages that may be awarded: compensatory and punitive. Compensatory includes tangible expenses that are easily quantifiable such as medical bills and lost wages, while punitive awards cover intangible losses such as pain and suffering that are more difficult to quantify but are still essential when reaching an equitable settlement agreement.
Quantifiable losses are easier to assess and quantify with receipts provided, while non-quantifiable ones present more of a challenge. A personal injury attorney is invaluable here, helping the victim gain an accurate evaluation of how their injuries will have an effect on life and work and then calculate a total value for losses sustained as a result of injury.
Insurance companies use multipliers between 1.5 and 5 to estimate noneconomic damages, the higher of which correspond with more severe and long-lasting injuries. But this figure should only serve as a starting point; personal injury lawyers work closely with experts in order to come up with a daily compensation rate for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and any other general damages suffered by victims.
Insurance companies then use this multiplier to calculate a potential settlement figure, with assistance from personal injury attorneys who review its reasonableness. Furthermore, many states have laws which limit shared fault; should the victim be found even partially responsible for their injuries, no damages will be awarded in those instances.
Damages for Pain and Suffering
If the injury is so severe as to cause substantial impairment to one’s quality of life, pain and suffering damages will often be awarded as well. This may cover lost enjoyment, effects on relationships as a result of injuries sustained as well as costs related to medical procedures or ongoing care.
Compensation for these losses can be difficult to measure; there’s no clear way of placing an exact dollar value on emotional distress and physical pain. A knowledgeable personal injury lawyer will take the time to understand all aspects of your injuries before building a strong case for an appropriate settlement amount.
When it comes to economic damages, courts can usually use receipts and financial statements as indicators for what a fair sum would be. When it comes to noneconomic losses such as pain and suffering, however, courts must resort to loose mathematical systems to calculate these losses.
Insurance companies typically multiply your total economic damages by between one and four in order to estimate pain and suffering compensation, although this rule doesn’t have to be strictly adhered to and juries in trials may also make their own decision about an award on an individual basis.
A jury may also use a per diem approach when awarding damages, wherein they set an hourly rate that accounts for what a victim endures per day due to an injury. This method takes into account both your quality of life and what would be expected under similar circumstances.
Per diem calculations conducted by lawyers will take into account both the cause of an injury as well as its effect on overall health. For example, if this involves arthritis or another chronic condition that afflicts their victim, these lawyers will examine its effects on overall health as well as long-term costs and quality of life impacts for that victim. Furthermore, these lawyers will compare his or her situation with similar ones to determine an accurate estimation for compensation payment.
