When you are injured due to somebody else’s negligence, it is very frustrating. You are likely going to get reimbursed for any kind of financial injury you’ve gotten as a result. An example would be any medical bills that you incurred. You’re also entitled to lost wages from missed work during your recovery. Any good personal injury lawyer will see to those things.
Getting compensation for pain and suffering is a bit more complicated. There are different sets of criteria involved and there is also a bit left up to subjectivity on the part of a judge. You’ll need a Huntington personal injury lawyer to make sure that you get the additional compensation to deal with your pain and suffering. In this article, we will go over what to know when it comes to making a claim for pain and suffering.
How pain and suffering are defined
Any injury is going to be painful to some degree. Some injuries are painful to the point that they are life-altering while others are milder and pass rather quickly. Since pain is relative and everybody experiences it differently, it is hard to pinpoint exactly how to determine if it warrants extra compensation. If your injury is painful and keeps you out of work then you will receive an award that equals the lost wages during that time.
Where your pain may warrant extra compensation is if there will also be future ages lost. If your injury makes it so that you are permanently unable to work as you had before and will either live off of disability or that you have to change careers then this usually carries extra compensation as a result.
The suffering part is harder to pin down. You may have PTSD as a result of the accident which inhibits your ability to live life as normally as you had previous to the accident. Yet, proving that you are suffering is not easy. Mental anguish is just as common and can be equally damaging as a physical injury would be.
How pain and suffering damages are calculated
Since all of these cases are different it is impossible to put an average award on them. To be able to know what to expect if you are trying to sue for pain and suffering, it’s important to understand how they are calculated.
There is a multiplier that is generally used to decide where and how to apply an award. The case is given a rating between 1 and 5 with each number being a multiplier on how many times an award should be calculated. For instance, a rating of 3 means that there is going to be three times the award calculated originally to compensate for additional pain and suffering.
Another method is a per diem award. This gives you a daily award that is continued until the day that there are no longer any medical improvements forthcoming.
