by After being in an accident and suffering injuries, you may be working with a personal injury lawyer to help you get the compensation you need. Your lawyer might have explained that the amount you are seeking comprises both economic and non-economic damages and how they arrive at a number to cover both.
Economic damages are items that can be easily calculated. These include all expenses related to recovering your health after you have been injured. They may start with the first bill you received after being taken to the emergency room immediately after the accident. Then, you have probably accumulated many other bills that cover doctor’s appointments, treatments and surgeries, medications, therapies and rehabilitation, and more.
Other economic damages may refer to your financial situation in the sense that you might have lost your job or might not have been able to return to it while recovering. That means wage loss will be among your expenses. Future wage loss and other medical expenses you expect to have in the future will also become part of the economic damages.
However, there are other intangible items that will also become part of the damages you are seeking. These are related to your state of mind and may include feelings that are defined as pain and suffering.
How Do You Prove Pain And Suffering?
Working with your lawyer, you will use documents such as your medical bills and records, the prognosis of your injuries, pictures of the injuries, psychiatric records, and testimonies of experts to make it quite clear that you are experiencing pain and suffering.
To prove that pain and suffering exist, your lawyer must emphasize how the accident and your injuries have disrupted your usual way of life and show that you have been dealing with debilitating physical impairments. They must also show that your injuries have resulted or will result in disfigurements or physical deformities. Any or all of these conditions may constitute pain and suffering.
Pain And Suffering And Life-Changing Injuries
Life-changing injuries include those that impact your spinal cord and may lead to either partial or full paralysis, injuries that result in amputation, and injuries that cause traumatic brain damage or have left you without the ability to communicate. They can also include severe burns in extensive areas of your body, loss of your eyesight, or forced infertility. You may have to stop working, no longer enjoy activities that you did before, and feel anxiety or depression. That is why these injuries would qualify as pain and suffering.
Determining A Reasonable Amount For Pain And Suffering
There are several methods that your lawyer can use to put a number to your pain and suffering. They can use either a per diem method (using an amount lost every day) or the multiplier method (which involves selecting a multiplier from one to five and multiplying your economic damages by it) to determine a fair amount of pain and suffering for your case. Goldstein & Goldstein LLP recommend you work with an experienced personal injury attorney to make sure the amount calculated for your pain and suffering is fair.
