Personal Injury Lawyer
What Factors Determine How Much My Personal Injury Case is Worth?
In a personal injury lawsuit, plaintiffs pursue damages. In general, damages reflect the amount of harm that a defendant’s negligent act caused the plaintiff. An award for damages may include several different forms of compensation. Direct damages represent a monetary loss that is the direct result of someone’s negligence. Consequential damages are also involved, which are secondary losses that occur as the indirect result of negligence. The value of a claim may depend on many different factors that influence the totality of a person’s direct and consequential damages. Here are some of the things that you should consider when evaluating how much your personal injury claim may be worth.
Medical Expenses
Your medical care for your injury will play a big role in your personal injury damages. Emergency care, visits with a specialist, medications, and follow-up care such as physical therapy will likely make up a large portion of your total damages. Even if you have health insurance that pays for some of these costs, the full value of your treatment is recoverable. However, your insurer may seek to join in the lawsuit for reimbursement of any medical expenses that it has paid.
Lost Wages
A serious injury can put a significant strain on your income. You can make a claim for all of your lost wages during the period that you missed work. You will calculate this amount by the length of time that you could not work multiplied by your rate of pay. If you do not have a fixed annual salary or hourly rate of pay, you can calculate your lost income based on information about your previous earnings.
Pain and Suffering
The more serious your injury, the greater your pain and suffering is likely to be. The severity of an injury in addition to the length of time that it causes you to experience intense pain may impact your compensation by entitling you to damages for pain and suffering.
Ultimately, no two injury cases are exactly the same, so it is hard to predict exactly how much you can collect. One must also consider a defendant’s ability to pay in assessing what a personal injury action is worth. A sizable damages award will be of little significance to a plaintiff if a defendant does not have assets or insurance to pay for it. A personal injury lawyer in Wytheville, VA from a firm like The Law Offices of Mark T. Hurt can offer you some constructive insight about your individual case.