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In personal injury lawsuits, you’re usually suing a person or entity who you allege harmed you. In such instances, you’re going to need to find a credible lawyer to represent you. Once you have, you can talk to them about how to move forward.
Collecting maximum damages in personal injury cases will presumably interest you. If you feel that a person or company hurt you or made you ill, you should have no compunctions about trying to get as large of a payout from them as you can. You’ll need to pay your lawyer out of the settlement, or the jury’s decision in your favor, if it comes to that. Afterward, you should be able to keep the bulk of the money.
The cash you receive might represent economic and noneconomic damages you suffered. If you’re going to sue someone, you should know about some of the more common causes of damages that fall into either of those categories.
Medical Bills
Let’s start with economic damages that you might try to recoup in a lawsuit. Assuming you can get a jury to agree that the person or business entity you’re suing harmed you, then you should no trouble proving economic damages. That’s because you can usually produce bills representing tangible evidence of money you paid while recovering from an illness or injury.
You might want to recoup the cost of medical bills if the person or company that hurt you or made you sick caused you to go to a hospital, clinic, or doctor’s office. Such a bill might represent the bulk of your expenses, especially if the person or business hurt you or made you so ill that you needed surgery or some other costly procedure.
If you have insurance, then maybe that paid for a portion of your medical expenses. However, if you had to pay copays to get medical treatment, that will certainly enter into the amount you and your lawyer demand from the person or entity you are suing.
Physical Therapy Bills
You can also include physical therapy bills in what you’re try to get back from the person or company you’re suing. Perhaps you slipped and fell while in a brick-and-mortar store location. You twisted your ankle, and you need to attend physical therapy sessions for months afterward to get you back on your feet again.
If so, that might cost you a great deal if you don’t have very good insurance. In such an instance, if you know you’re suing the business that caused your injury, you will want to keep very careful track of those copays. You can add that to the tally of medical bills from surgery or whatever other medical procedures you endured.
Lost Wages
Lost wages might enter into what you’ll ask for at trial as well, if the lawsuit reaches that point. In some cases, you might get temporary disability payments. Maybe you can get worker’s comp instead. Either way, that may help you stay afloat until such time as you can return to work, assuming you ever can.
However, whether you can get worker’s comp or temporary disability payments, they will almost certainly not be enough to cover the amount of money that you typically earn at your job. You can sue the person or entity who you allege harmed you for the difference.
You can produce your normal pay stubs in the courtroom, again assuming the defendant doesn’t settle before the trial starts. If you get the same amount every week, or month, in some instances, then you can easily point to a dollar amount that the person or entity that hurt you owes.
These economic damages all fall into the tangible realm. You can usually produce physical evidence that shows exactly how much the guilty party should pay you. However, that does not count noneconomic losses, which fall into a completely separate category.
Pain and Suffering
In the legal niche, you might hear the term “pain and suffering” sometimes. That’s a catchall term that a lawyer might use when they’re helping you with your lawsuit.
Pain and suffering don’t have a set definition in the legal world. However, if you tell a jury that you had to get surgery because of some action or inaction by a person or company, and you also describe the days of painful recovery that came after, they should easily understand what that means as fellow human beings.
A jury or any rational person can easily understand the pain and suffering premise. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can easily agree on what financial amount the guilty party should pay you if they also agree that the defendant harmed you. That’s when you and your lawyer must probably look at and cite precedent.
You can let your lawyer do that, since they will presumably know all about the legal niche and similar cases. In general, though, you can assume that you should demand more money in instances where you had a more difficult recovery experience.
If you had to stay in bed for four months recovering from a broken leg, for example, and then you had to endure another six months of physical therapy after that, you should expect a sizeable payday.
Loss of Consortium
Loss of consortium falls into the noneconomic damages category. This term refers to things you could once do before the injury or illness but that you can’t do afterward.
For example, maybe you can no longer enjoy physical intimacy with a spouse or partner. Perhaps you can no longer ride a bike, play catch with your kids in the backyard, etc.
If you have a permanent disability, then you would obviously demand more money. If you will recover eventually and then you can do all those things you once could, you should demand less.
In most cases, you will try to get both economic and noneconomic damages when you bring a lawsuit against a person or company.