Your Guide To Receiving Compensatory Damages For A Personal Injury
Personal injury lawsuits can result in different types of damage that make up your total settlement amount. While punitive damages are awarded in cases where an injury was caused with intent or recklessness, compensatory damages will generally be what you receive for medical bills and non-monetary losses that you suffer. Here is what you need to know about what makes up your compensatory damages.
Pain and Suffering
The big category that everyone is familiar with is pain and suffering. Personal injury lawsuits are not just about the monetary losses that you are trying to regain, but about the experience that you had to go through due to someone's negligence.
Even if you make a full recovery from your injury, you need to be compensated for having to go through the injury and recovery process. This includes compensation for the actual pain that you felt when you were injured, rehabilitation, and the time where you may have limited physical ability.
Mental Anguish
There can be a lot of mental anguish that you suffer from after an injury occurs, which can make getting back to a normal life difficult. This often happens in car accidents, where the victim feels scared to get back behind the wheel of a vehicle because they do not want to get into another accident. The circumstances of the accident can also cause issues with anxiety, where even if you start driving a vehicle again, you feel uneasy the entire time.
Medical Bills
Your injury will result in a lot of medical bills. Unfortunately, a long recovery can lead to bills that come in far after your settlement is decided on. This unique situation requires expert testimony to verify your injuries and provide an estimate of what your future medical bills will be. For example, if you will need to continue visiting a doctor and go through rehabilitation for the injury, the length of recovery may be estimated as another two years after the settlement is finished. Those costs need to be accounted for.
Lost Earnings
Any time that you are losing money by not working is money that you can be compensated for. Lost wages can include actual days that you were not paid for because you were in the hospital or the value of the sick days that you had to use for your injury. After all, those are sick days that you would not have used if it was not for the injury happening to you.
For more information, contact local professionals like those found at Jack W Hanemann, P.S.
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