Personal Injury Cases

Were you in an accident? Did you sustain injuries because of someone else’s negligence? How you incurred medical expenses and financial losses due to your injuries? Then, you are entitled to seek damages. While no one can promise you that you will recoup all of your losses, most personal injury attorneys will do their best to ensure that you are made as close to whole as possible through settlement negotiations or a trial, if it comes to that. What does that mean for you now? What expenses can be recovered, and is there any way to be compensated for the non-tangibles? Yes. Personal injury damages run the gamut of compensatory and punitive losses. However, more commonly, you will be paid through compensatory damages.

Punitive Versus Compensatory

Punitive damages are granted to punish the at-fault party, but these are increasingly rarer in personal injury claims unless you can prove intent. Therefore, most recovery attempts will seek compensatory damages, which look to regain actual financial losses because of an injury.

Types of Compensatory Losses

Compensatory losses can be placed into two categories: (1) physical costs and (2) emotional injuries. Physical costs break down into actual provable monetary losses. For example, medical bills or expenses related to your physical recovery are concrete. Also, lost income, property damage and other out-of-pocket costs can all be proven with receipts and medical records. Emotional injuries, like trauma, loss of love and enjoyment, embarrassment, are not as easy to prove causation, which makes these pain and suffering type of injuries abstract and hard to quantify. However, these injuries are still prevalent in personal injury lawsuits, but they might take a little extra work by your lawyer and their research and investigative teams.

The Importance of Hiring a Lawyer

While provable injuries are easy to document and show a defendant or judge, abstract injuries are more complicated. A practiced personal injury attorney, especially one who is established with support staff, is more capable of fighting for both types of compensatory damages. Therefore, while your initial instinct might be to file a claim alone, know that you are likely going to lose dollars in your settlement offer because of that decision. There is a reason that attorneys attend law programs and extensive testing before being able to argue in a court on someone’s behalf. They know the law, and those specializing in personal injury law, know how to negotiate for the best recovery possible,

When you are injured in an accident, it can be challenging to sort through the concerns and worry to compose a solid legal argument for your recovery claim.