Calculating Damages: What is Your Personal Injury Claim Worth?
It is difficult to give a definitive answer of how much a personal injury claim is worth without having a personal injury lawyer conduct a full investigation of the accident. There are many factors that affect the value of the case and for an accurate value of your case, you should contact a personal injury attorney, like Hupy and Abraham.
However, there are ways of calculating a rough estimate. In any personal injury claim, there are several components that dictate exactly how much your case is worth.
Economic Losses
Firstly, there are economic damages. These are the financial losses you incurred as a result of the accident. Economic damages could be medical bills, lost earnings, or damaged property.
These are usually quantifiable, and you will need to provide supporting documentation to prove your economic losses. These may include but are not limited to, medical bills, doctors’ estimates on future treatment, payslips, a note from your employer detailing missed workdays, and vehicle repair estimates.
However, a word of warning. If you failed to take steps to mitigate the damages and losses after the accident, you may be inadvertently reducing the value of your case. If you didn’t go to the doctors before your injuries worsened, for example, or you continued to drive your damaged car until it became even more damaged and could not be repaired, you may find the value of your case diminished, even if the original damages were substantial.
Non-Economic Losses
Another component that dictates how much your personal injury claim is worth is less quantifiable. These are non-economic losses. These can include pain and suffering, emotional trauma, anxiety, and stress. All of these were brought on by the accident but assigning a financial value to these non-economic losses is not always easy.
Your personal injury lawyer can help you provide evidence for non-economic losses. But if you are suffering from any of these ongoing problems as a result of the accident, you could have a strong case for compensation for your non-economic losses:
- Continued and prolonged pain
- Insomnia
- Persistent and debilitating fear or anxiety
- Loss of enjoyment from or the inability to partake in activities you used to love
- Loss of consortium (damages to your relationship with your spouse as a result of the accident)
To get a proper understanding of how personal injury lawyers work, read more here.
Punitive Damages
In cases where the accident was caused by gross negligence or misconduct, such as a trucking accident that necessitates a bothell truck accident lawyer to advocate for your rights, you may see the value of your case increase as punitive damages are added to the compensation.
Punitive damages are not about recompensing you for out-of-pocket expenses or emotional trauma, they are about punishing the person responsible for the accident. You must be able to provide evidence that the accident was a direct result of this individual or corporation’s carelessness and negligence.
If you can’t prove this, you may still be able to recover punitive damages, but they will be considerably smaller. For example, if you were partly to blame, you could be awarded a small amount for comparative negligence.
Insurance Coverage
The final factor that will determine the value of your case is the responsible party’s insurance coverage. If the corporation or individual that caused the injury is covered by their insurance company, then they can recover the full value of your case.
However, if they are not fully covered, the value of your case will have to come from their personal finances, or the value of your case could be limited by their insurance policy limits.
