You are most likely here because the negligence of another party, or parties, has caused you pain and suffering. Making a claim against them might be challenging because solid, thorough evidence and legal acumen are often required to guarantee just compensation for you. Additionally, you will need a personal injury lawyer to help you present an equitable defense against the offender should the claim move to trial. We will go through what constitutes reasonable compensation for your pain and suffering in this article and how to obtain it.
What Is Pain and Suffering?
The term “pain and suffering” is used in law to describe the trauma, pain, and suffering a person experiences due to a personal injury. This agony can manifest as injuries, pain, dread, shame, and more. This phrase is used when a third party is to blame for the suffering you endured, and you can use it to seek financial compensation.
Car Accident Compensation for Pain and Suffering
You must understand precisely what is included in the “pain and suffering” category to determine your compensation for it. Typically, tracking and quantifying expenses like your medical bills is simple. On the other hand, certain expenses are more abstract, which makes them more challenging to understand and characterize. As a result, compared to special damages, general
damages are more difficult to claim. Your general and special damages can be appropriately assessed and identified with the assistance of a personal injury attorney in North Carolina.
General Damages
The sorts of harm that are plainly evident through someone’s injury or property damage are known as general damages, also known as economic damages. These injuries might be apparent immediately, but they might also take time to manifest themselves. For instance, a person can be healing from an injury when they discover they have additional injuries.
As previously stated, general damages are also referred to as economic damages, which indicates that a person will be required to pay a certain financial amount for treatment and recovery. Your hospital bills, as well as any associated receipts and records that represent cash outflow on your part, can be used to track down these charges. The amount you are entitled to as compensation for damages categorized as general or economic damages is not disputed.
Here are a few examples of general damages:
- Physical rehabilitation
- Lost wages
- Repairs to vehicles and other assets
- The cost of therapy
- Hospital bills
- Price of an ambulance
- The price of medicines and medical supplies needed to treat injuries
Special Damages
Special damages are more difficult to track than general damages, making them more challenging to establish and argue in court. Special damages, often known as “non-economic damages,” are those that cannot be quantified in terms of a precise financial amount.
Additionally, these damages extend to your emotional suffering throughout recuperation as well as your ongoing distress related to the incident and the process of rehabilitation from it. Because of this, special damages in court situations when you seek reimbursement from a third party fall under the category of “pain and suffering.”
Special damages include, for instance:
- Emotional stress and anxiety
- Enduring pain
- Loss of hearing and vision
- Deformity
- Inability to perform daily activities
- A lower standard of living
- Mental distress, including depression, PTSD, and a loss of enjoyment
If established in court, these and other specific damages may be utilized to hold the party responsible for reimbursement.
How to Measure Pain and Suffering
How do we account for it now that we’ve clarified what constitutes pain and suffering? How will attorneys choose the best amount to sue the negligent party for? There are two ways to achieve this, and which is best truly depends on the accident’s specific circumstances.
Per Diem Approach
The per diem system values the discomfort you endure daily in dollars. In essence, this means that you are assigning a value to the losses that you endure daily, such as when a person loses their productivity as a result of trauma or the quantity of work hours that they are no longer able to complete due to chronic ailments. Putting a dollar amount on your daily loss can be done by comparing your pre-accident income to your income now that the accident has happened. Your loss per diem will be the amount that differs between these two figures.
The total amount of compensation that the defendant owes you is calculated by multiplying this by the number of days you have been inconvenienced. For instance, the defendant owes you a total of $6,000 in damages if you establish that you are losing $200 every day due to a personal injury and 30 days have already passed.
Multiplier Technique
The multiple approaches are the ones that are more frequently used to measure someone’s pain and suffering. In fact, this is how big insurance firms decide how much money to provide their customers in terms of compensation. You will begin by totaling all of your financial losses. Then, depending on the severity of your suffering and the magnitude of the aforementioned economic damages, among many other qualitative elements, these damages are multiplied by a number between 1.5 and 5. The sum from this calculation serves as the foundation for the settlement you will seek from the defendant.
Let us Evaluate the Fairness of the Settlement at Tatum & Atkinson
Calculating pain and suffering is challenging, particularly if these figures will later be used as evidence in court. To obtain a precise and clearly justifiable assessment for your pain and suffering, it is necessary to contact a personal injury attorney in North Carolina. Contact Tatum & Atkinson, ‘the Heavy Hitters,” if you need a personal injury lawyer to assist you in navigating the complexities of requesting financial compensation for your pain and suffering. We will fight for your rights in court and ensure you receive the settlement you are entitled to. Call (800) 529-0804 or contact us online to schedule your free and confidential case evaluation.
