If you’ve been in an accident, the biggest loss you face may be the life you used to live — free of physical and emotional pain. Learn how you can recover for pain and suffering if you have been hurt in a car accident.
After a car accident, you may have a whole host of damages or losses. Property damage to your car, medical bills, and lost wages are fairly simple to identify and put a number on: you simply add up the bills or receipts. But for other damages, it can be a lot more challenging to say exactly how much they are worth — and even more difficult to prove their monetary value.
An example of this types of damages is pain and suffering. Known as non-economic damages, these losses can include post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and physical pain resulting from injuries. Proving these damages requires the help of a capable and experienced car accident attorney to show that these losses exist — and that you deserve to be fairly compensated for them.
How Can Pain and Suffering Be Calculated?
Determining how much a person’s pain and suffering is worth is a complicated process. These types of damages can account for as much as 50 percent of an award in a personal injury case, but figuring out an exact figure can be challenging. In California, there are two main ways that pain and suffering damages are calculated in personal injury cases: per diem and value for relief from pain.
For per diem claims, the judge is given a number figure that is meant to represent a person’s emotional and physical pain on a daily basis. It is meant to cover not just what the person has suffered in the past, but what he or she continues to suffer and will endure in the future. It can include calculations for permanent disabilities such as scarring, disfigurement, traumatic brain injuries and paralysis, all of which will tend to amount in much larger awards for pain and suffering because a person will suffer from these disabilities for their entire lifetime.
Values for pain relief represent how much an average person would deserve be paid to get relieved from the pain and suffering that they are experiencing. This takes into account both what the victim has already suffered since the accident and what they will go through in the future.
When it comes to proving these figures, a skilled car accident attorney can put together evidence to back up these claims for damages. Expert witnesses — including medical professionals — can testify as to the diagnoses that a person has, and what they have observed in that person in terms of pain and suffering. The amount of pain medication that a person takes can be used to show that the person is suffering from physical pain, and other medications for mental health issues can be utilized to demonstrate that the victim is also suffering from emotional pain. Friends and family members can testify about their observations of the person, and how they have seen their loved one suffer in the aftermath of an accident. Through expert witnesses, medical reports, witness testimony and other evidence, a seasoned car accident attorney can present a comprehensive claim for non-economic damages to convince a jury that an award for pain and suffering is necessary.
Trauma, mental health issues and physical pain can be some of the most difficult aspects of recovering after a car accident. Being compensated monetarily for these losses won’t make these problems disappear, but it can help to ease the stress and burden and let you focus on getting better. If you have been hurt in a car accident, contact the Law Offices of Larry H. Parker at 800-333-0000 or info@larryhparker.com. We are highly skilled at proving both economic and non-economic damages in all types of personal injury cases, including car accidents, and have a network of expert witnesses who can testify as to your losses. Initial consultations are always free, and we never charge a fee unless we get money for you!
