It is the goal of any personal injury claim to gain compensation for the losses resulting from an accident. To put a number on how an injury affects your life can be difficult, and an experienced attorney can help put together those losses into a monetary figure. Calculating compensation involves summing up all economic and noneconomic losses, resulting in the total compensation you are entitled to.
Economic losses include medical bills, lost wages and other out of pocket expenses. In most cases your medical bills will be paid for by some form of insurance. However, any co-payments and unreimbursed medical expenses that you incur are reimbursable through your lawsuit. Sometimes, you may even be required to reimburse your healthcare provider for medical expenses that they have incurred if you do receive a settlement. In those instances, that amount of money will be passed onto the defendant in the case. For example, if you incur $15,000 in medical expenses that have to be reimbursed to your health insurance company, that amount of money would be added to your settlement so that the cost is passed on to the responsible party.
Also, many people have disability policies that pay them a portion of their salary following an injury. In a personal injury lawsuit, you are entitled to receive your total lost wages from the defendant. If your insurer is entitled to reimbursement from your lawsuit, then you will receive the total amount of lost wages from the defendant and be required to repay the insurer the amount that was already paid to you.
In addition, other out of pocket expenses may be added to your entitled compensation. For example, if you had any travel expenses due to the injury or if you had to pay for any modifications on your home or car. Even further, sometimes the seriousness of the injury results in lasting economic damages in the future. Sometimes, these losses are permanent. In a case where returning to your employment is no longer possible because of the injury, you are entitled to life-long wages. Our firm will hire an economist to accurately calculate the reimbursement for those kinds of future losses.
Non-economic Losses: Non-economic losses include your pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life and other emotional injuries. Unlike economic damages, non-economic damages are more subjective. Therefore, it can often be difficult to put a financial figure on such damages. The way it is usually done is by comparing people that have suffered similar injuries and seeing what juries have awarded them at trial. However, if a settlement cannot be reached then that amount of money is decided by a jury. This can often lead to a wide discrepancy from case to case. Also, like economic losses, non-economic losses can also be permanent. In such cases that will have to be accounted for in the jury’s verdict or in the settlement.
Finally, perhaps the most important factor in determining the amount of money that you are entitled to following an accident is the amount of insurance the responsible party has to satisfy any judgment you obtain. For example, if your total losses equal $1,000,000 but the responsible party is only insured for $25,000, your only way of recovering the difference will be by personally enforcing the judgment you obtain at trial against the responsible party’s assets.
