Understanding The Types Of Damages For Personal Injury Claims
Brian O Sutter
Personal Injury
When you decide to pursue a personal injury claim, you will quickly be faced with a lot of legal jargon. Most of it, your attorney will handle but there are some key terms you should know. However, what you really need to know about are your damages. Damages is the legal term for the costs incurred by your accident. Damages include both tangible things like the cost of your medical bills and intangible things like how much the injury hurts. Here is a guide to the types of damages that can be awarded as part of your personal injury settlement.Types Of Compensatory Damages
Compensatory damages are essentially damages that are direct and can be totaled. These include tangible costs such as:
● Medical Bills: Medical bills are pretty straightforward. They include the costs of all your medical care and treatment. Medical bills include everything from doctor’s visits to prescription medicine to in-home healthcare. They can also include the immediate medical bills as well as the medical bills you will face in the future as a result of your injuries.
● Loss Of Earnings: Injuries often knock people off their feet, so they aren’t able to work like they normally could. Loss of earnings include any missed wages and benefits, now and in the future. This can also include loss of future earnings when say the injury is so severe you can’t perform your normal job anymore. Sometimes you can also claim damages for job retraining.
● Household Expenses: Household expenses include anything directly related to the injury. So transportation to and front medical appointments, any modifications you’ve had to make to your home for your injury, or even having to hire a cleaning person because your injuries prevented you from cleaning your own home.
These damages are really easy to calculate, but they aren’t the only costs after an injury.
Types Of General Damages
General damages are the intangible costs associated with your injuries, so they are a little more difficult to calculate. However, your attorney understands the standard calculations associated with each of these types of damages. General damages include:
● Loss Of Enjoyment: Loss of enjoyment is basically when your injuries have gotten in the way of your normal happy life. For example, if you played tennis every day, but then were in an accident that leads to paralysis in your arm, you can’t enjoy your favorite hobby anymore.
● Loss Of Companionship And Consortium: These are most often associated with wrongful death claims, but they can also apply in severe injuries. Loss of consortium is the loss of or damage to important relationships like with your spouse or children as a result of your injury. A severe injury can cause a lot of damage to a family.
● Pain And Suffering: Pain and suffering is exactly what it says. It’s the physical pain and emotional suffering that is caused by your injuries. This trauma can be a whole secondary injury that can impact your life in a fundamentally negative way. These things can take a toll on anyone.
These things are intangible but that doesn’t make them any less real. You deserve to be compensated for these losses as well as the tangible ones.
Understanding Punitive Damages
Punitive damages are very rare in personal injury cases and are awarded only in extreme circumstances of gross misbehavior leading to your injuries. Punitive damages are also a type of intangible damage. They are awarded as a penalty to the negligent party that caused your injuries.
What’s important about understanding all of these damages is that they include things you may not have considered. All of these costs are very real and with the help of an experienced attorney, like our team at All Injuries Law Firm, you can receive the full amount of what you are owed. To learn more about what your personal injury claim is worth, give us a call at 1-941-625-HURT.