An accident victim can find it challenging to put a dollar value on intangible losses they experience as the result of an accident, so personal injury attorneys often employ an estimation method called multipliers to estimate non-economic damages such as pain and suffering.
Economic damages (or special damages ) can be calculated quite simply. But when it comes to general damages estimates, things become more complex.
Loss of Earnings
Financial effects of personal injuries can have devastating repercussions for victims who cannot work due to injury, so seeking compensation to cover lost income is often essential when filing a personal injury claim.
Calculating past losses is relatively straightforward. Your lawyer can look over pay stubs and bank statements to establish an individual’s average pre-accident income and any benefits affected by injury – such as vacation days and sick leaves, insurance payouts, retirement contributions, or other perks that have been lost as a result.
Calculating future lost earnings is more complex. This figure takes into account your expected annual income over the remainder of your career and your age and life expectancy; your attorney should consult a forensic economist when making this calculation. After totalling up all economic damages, multipliers are applied against them to arrive at an award amount for non-economic damages.
Medical Expenses
Medical expenses – known as special damages in personal injury litigation – play an essential role when calculating a settlement amount for personal injury claims. Receipts, invoices and medical records which show paid medical expenses serve as strong evidence to support your case.
These expenses cover prescription medication, doctor visits, surgical procedures and other direct healthcare costs. Furthermore, these expenses cover physical therapy sessions, rehabilitation therapies and rehabilitation sessions, mobility devices such as wheelchairs and mental health treatment costs.
Your attorney can accurately calculate the future cost of your medical expenses using documentation of past bills and expert testimony, along with inflation in healthcare costs to make sure you receive compensation for future needs. Once they’ve added up all tangible medical damages and applied what’s known as a multiplier between 1.5-5 times to reach noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering – this number will serve as the basis of any settlement offers made by them on your behalf.
Future Care Costs
Future medical expenses can be an essential element of compensation for victims of permanent injuries. A knowledgeable lawyer can work alongside physician experts and life care planning specialists to assess how your injuries might impact upon your lifestyle in the coming years and estimate potential expenses while applying a discount rate that brings these costs down to present value.
Non-economic damages like pain and suffering are harder to quantify; yet they should never be discounted as part of personal injury compensation.
Experienced injury attorneys can help you gain all of the compensation that is owed to you after being involved in a serious accident. By employing advanced calculation techniques, they will make sure that any settlement is fair and accounts for all past, current and future losses such as medical bills or repair invoices as well as non-economic ones such as pain and suffering. To find out more, reach out for a complimentary case evaluation with one.
Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering is difficult to calculate in dollar terms; nevertheless it should be an integral component of any personal injury case. It includes emotional trauma as well as any discomfort experienced due to an accident such as insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The multiplier method and per diem approach are two primary approaches for measuring pain and suffering. The former requires victims to calculate all economic damages caused by an incident such as medical bills and lost earnings before multiplying it by any number between 1.5-5; the higher this multiplier number is, the greater will be their non-economic damages.
Both multiplier and per diem methods of calculation have their limitations; however, an experienced personal injury lawyer can offer invaluable insight. They can assist victims in estimating what their settlement should be in their specific circumstances as well as review evidence to assess its strength if they choose to fight it in court.