If you are wondering how much money am I entitled to after an injury, this article explains how compensation is calculated. If you are at this step, then you have already hired a skilled personal injury attorney, the court has assigned fault to the defendant, and you have finished treatment for your injuries. The basic purpose of judicial remedies is to place a party who has been wronged, as nearly as possible, in the position that party would have been in if no wrong had occurred. There are, however, exceptions discussed below that go beyond mere compensation.
Compensatory Damages
We break these damages down into three traditional categories. Those are medical expenses, lost wages, and compensation for the pain and suffering you experienced due to the accident. This is the largest and perhaps most general category. In addition, the tortfeasor is responsible for any damages that were foreseeable as a result of their negligence. This is a term of art, and it will take a competent attorney to assist you with this. For the legal definition, the Cornell Legal Information Institute explains the categories of civil damages in detail.
Medical Expenses
It is only fair that a tortfeasor should have to pay for your hospital bills if they caused your injury. You should not have to foot the bill for injuries that you did not cause. Medical bills can cost thousands of dollars, and you may not be able to pay for these on your own. Even if you are, it is certainly burdensome. Notably, the medical expenses must relate to the injury the tortfeasor caused. In the legal sphere, lawyers call this “causation”.
Lost Wages
You may also have missed time from work. You have bills to pay and may not be able to afford to miss time. The law does afford you the right to obtain compensation for lost wages, so long as a doctor excused the time off. Moreover, if you are no longer able to work the same job as before due to your injury, and you have to settle for a job that does not pay as well, the law protects you here as well. This commonly applies to jobs requiring manual labor of some kind.
Pain and Suffering
The third, broader category is pain and suffering. This is a noneconomic damage. The defendant need not have foreseen the extent or severity of the harm. Lawyers call this the “eggshell plaintiff” rule. Because this category can be very broad, the underlying significance is that you may be able to recover for pain, discomfort, anguish, inconvenience, and emotional trauma related to an injury. Another traditional aspect of this is the loss of consortium and loss of enjoyment of life.
Punitive Damages
The exception here is if the harmful conduct is intentional, malicious, outrageous, or otherwise aggravated beyond mere negligence. In such a case, the court may award punitive damages. The purpose of this category of damages is to punish and deter. Unlike the other category, which compensates, this is a rarer instance where civil law punishes a tortfeasor. This is a higher bar and requires a skilled attorney to prove it by a preponderance of the evidence.
A nursing home abuse case often involves punitive damages. Malice likely exists because the worker knows what he or she is doing. There are aspects to damages that, of course, are too complicated to be explained in a more general article such as this. This article aims to educate, and you should not rely on it without proper guidance from an experienced attorney.
No outcome is guaranteed, and each category of damages will depend on your individual case. Further, proving these damages is more complicated than understanding it, which is why it is important to call for a free case consultation to better understand your rights against the person who caused your injury.
If you have been injured, our experienced personal injury lawyer and wrongful death lawyer are available for a free consultation.
