If you’ve been personally injured because of someone else’s actions or negligence, you may be entitled to compensation. But what type of compensation, exactly, are you entitled to? How are these damages calculated, and how do you maximize the damages you’re paid?
Your Personal Injury Lawyer
Hiring a personal injury lawyer is the first step of the process. Your personal injury lawyer is going to advise you and represent you throughout this process, helping you understand the details of your case, assisting you in gathering evidence, negotiating on your behalf, and potentially even representing you in court.
Once you have a lawyer in place, the process becomes much more straightforward and easier to manage; in most cases, you’ll simply need to follow your lawyer’s advice and guidance as you seek compensation for your injury.
That said, it’s important to exercise discretion when hiring a lawyer. Choose someone with the appropriate credentials, experience in personal injury law, and past results to prove their competence.
Types of Damages in a Personal Injury Case
There are many types and subtypes of damages that you can win in a personal injury case, including:
· Medical bills and related expenses. Compensatory damages are designed to reimburse people for expenses they’ve incurred due to their injury. The most straightforward type of compensatory damages are medical bills and related expenses. If you have hospital bills, physical therapy bills, expenses related to prescription
medications, and other expenses, they should be compensated by the party responsible for your injuries.
· Lost wages. Similarly, you may qualify for compensation for your lost wages. If you earn $1,000 a week, and your personal injury left you unable to work for two weeks, you’d likely qualify for $2,000 in compensation. There are some caveats to keep in mind here, but the general principle is in play.
· Repair or replacement of property. If your injury occurred as a result of an accident or incident that also involved personal property, you may be entitled to compensation for repairing or replacing that property, depending on the extent of the damage. For example, if you were injured in a car accident and your car was totaled, you may be eligible for compensation for that vehicle.
· Funeral expenses. If the injury resulted in a wrongful death, you may qualify for funeral expenses related to the decedent.
· Pain and suffering. In addition to compensatory damages, you may also qualify for damages related to less tangible aspects of your injury’s impact. For example, you may qualify for compensation based on your subjective pain and suffering. This can be exceptionally hard to quantify in some cases.
· Loss of companionship. If you lost a close loved one as a result of this injury, you may be entitled to compensation for your loss of companionship as well.
· Loss of enjoyment of life. Along similar lines, you may be awarded damages based on loss of enjoyment of life. This is especially applicable to cases where the injury leaves you disabled or disfigured.
· Punitive damages. In rare cases, you may also be awarded punitive damages, which are awarded to punish the defendant rather than compensating the plaintiff. Depending on the nature of your case, you may qualify for all of these, some of these, or none of these. Everything hinges on the nature of the injury, the circumstances of the injury, your jurisdiction, and other variables.
How Are Damages Calculated?
How are damages calculated?
· Receipts. Receipts and other forms of proof of payment are some of the strongest pieces of evidence that you can show to prove damages. As long as you can make a good case that these expenses arose as a direct result of your injury, you’ll likely qualify for compensation.
Other tangible evidence. You can also show other pieces of tangible evidence, such as demonstrating that you've had recurring nightmares or symptoms of PTSD as a result of the accident.
· Personal testimony. Juries and judges will also sometimes consider the subjective perspective of a plaintiff when calculating damages. Accordingly, your personal testimony does bear some weight, though tangible evidence will be weighed more favorably.
· Expert testimony. In many cases, damages can be calculated as lower or higher based on testimony provided by experts. For example, a medical expert might attest to the subjective pain associated with a particular type of injury, or a psychology expert might attest to the impact of psychological trauma associated with the accident.
The damages you receive as a result of your personal injury case depend on many factors, so it’s very hard to predict the outcome of your case based on initial details alone. If you want a more accurate conception of what you might qualify for, the best course of action is to talk to a personal injury attorney directly.
