How Much Can You Sue For Bodily Injury?
When a person is injured in an accident, they are entitled to receive compensation for their losses. These damages include medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. These monetary awards are important to help you recover from the injury and move forward with your life.
How Much Can You Sue for Bodily Injury?
The amount of compensation you can receive depends on a few different factors. You will want to consult with an experienced personal injury lawyer to learn how much you can expect to collect from a settlement or judgment.
Special Damages
The most basic way to calculate the value of your bodily injury claim is to add up your economic damages, including medical bills and lost wages. You may also need to cover the cost of rehabilitation and other costs associated with your injuries.
If you have suffered a serious injury, you might be unable to work and must pay for long-term care, such as physical therapy. These expenses can be a major strain on your budget.
You can often recover this money through your insurance company, as long as you were not paying the bill yourself at the time of the accident. However, this is not always the case.
Depending on the type of injury, you may be able to collect non-economic damages such as pain and suffering, mental anguish, and disfigurement. These types of damages are not typically quantified in a specified dollar amount, but they can be valued by a jury or judge to determine the proper payout for your injury.
General Damages
Once you have a fair idea of what your special and medical damages are, the next step is to determine the overall value of your injury. You should calculate this figure by multiplying your special damages by a multiplier based on the severity of your injury.
This is a common practice in insurance and personal injury law to help adjusters and attorneys get a sense of how much a plaintiff should ask for based on their injuries. In some cases, the multiplier can be as high as 5.
The higher the multiplier, the more you should ask for in general damages. This is because the greater your injuries are, the more you should expect to suffer.
Regardless of how you are measuring your damages, it is important to have all the supporting evidence available to prove your case. This can include copies of medical bills and other documents proving the severity of your injuries. You can also seek expert testimony about the physical and emotional impact of your injuries.
