If you’ve been in an accident caused by someone else’s negligence and the bills start to pile up, you would justifiably want to find a way to take legal action and alleviate financial burdens. Therefore, the question that naturally comes to mind is, how much is my case worth?.
Calculating ‘damages’ is more than adding up your bills; it is a careful assessment of all your losses and how they may impact your future. As a personal injury law firm in NYC, calculating damages is part of our job at Gabriel Law, and in this post, we will share how experienced attorneys determine the fair and reasonable compensation you deserve.
What are the damages considered in a personal injury lawsuit?
In a legal sense, ‘damages’ are the remedies that an injured person demands to get them back to the position they were in before the accident. Since we cannot go back and rewrite the past, courts allow for the victims to be compensated for the physical, mental, and financial losses they’ve suffered due to the accident. As such, damages claimed in lawsuits are of two types—economic and non-economic damages.
Economic damages refer to all the financial losses you’ve suffered due to the accident. These include medical expenses, property damage, lost wages, and other accident-related expenses. A key feature of economic damages is that they can be easily quantified since they have a set financial value. This is the reason why your standard insurance policy only covers economic damages—they know exactly how much they need to pay.
On the other hand, what accounts for the “pain and suffering” that results from the accident are non-economic damages. Unlike in economic damages, there is no set value for pain and suffering, and the courts decide an appropriate value on a case-by-case basis. Examples of non-economic damages that are often mentioned include
- Mental distress (depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc.)
- Loss of consortium
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Diminished quality of life
What are the methods used for calculating damages?
When you speak with a lawyer about your case and they get back to you with a value that they think is fair and reasonable compensation, you would understandably want to know how they came up with that number. The final value of your claim is a combination of all your economic and non-economic damages. Calculating your economic damages is simply a matter of adding up all your bills, but when it comes to calculating non-economic damages, most insurance companies, lawyers, and the courts rely on one of two methods. They are
- The Multiplier Method
- The Per Diem Method
The Multiplier Method
This is the most common method used to calculate pain and suffering. Under this method, we take all the economic damages you’ve suffered and multiply it by a multiplying factor between 1.5 and 5. While the calculation is relatively simple, the challenge lies with assigning the multiplier. The general rule of thumb is that the more serious your injuries and damages, the higher the multiplying factor. Some of the factors considered when assigning the multiplier are
- The types and extents of the injuries suffered
- The impact of the injuries on the person’s daily life and career
- The impact of the injuries on the person’s relationships with others
- The extent of the treatment and medications required
The Per Diem Method
Under the per diem method, a dollar value is assigned per day for your pain and suffering following the accident. The dollar value must be paid daily for the period that the pain and suffering persisted. This time period usually starts from the date of the accident to the day the patient is discharged from the doctor’s care.
What can I do to prove damages in personal injury cases?
When it comes to proving damages, evidence is the name of the game. The evidence that can be used to successfully demonstrate your losses, as well as pain and suffering, includes
- Medical Records
- Police Reports
- Journals detailing your pain and suffering following the incident
- Statements from friends, family, and co-workers comparing actions and behavior before and after the accident.
Conclusion
When you’ve been injured in an accident and are looking to claim compensation for your losses, you need to first present to the court a value that best represents all your financial losses as well as your pain and suffering. Calculating these values is one of the main responsibilities of an attorney. At Gabriel Law, our accident lawyer New York team understands how critical this process can be and will ensure that everything in your case is evaluated so that you get the compensation you deserve. Get in touch with us today and schedule yourself a free consultation.