By: Curran Tompkins, Associate Lawyer
What do physical injuries, emotional trauma and financial loss all have in common? They all affect the settlement you could receive for your claim. Our blog post explains more.
It is a lawyer’s job to figure out how much your claim is worth. We take four things into consideration:
Have you lost income (past, present or future) due to your accident-related injuries?
Has the accident affected your ability to take care of yourself, your family and your home?
What are the physical and emotional consequences of your accident-related injuries?
Will there be a cost associated in treating your physical and mental injuries (past, present and future?)
These are called “heads of damage” and are under four categories: pain and suffering (known as general damages), loss of income, cost of care and valuable services.
Your general damages are calculated from comparing your injuries and situation to cases that have gone to trial and have been quantified by a judge. We always adjust these values for the cost of inflation. These injuries are not only limited to the physical- the courts also recognize psychological issues and trauma stemming from an accident. These range from fear and anxiety while driving, depression, and in severe cases, post-traumatic stress disorder.
While general damages are its own category, and have its own value, the effect of your physical, psychological, and emotional trauma often have a flow through affect on your other heads of damages.
Will you require psychological counseling because of the accident? Will this be in the short term, or for the long term? Will you miss time now, or in the future, because of flare-ups of your physical or psychological issues?
These are all questions lawyers ask themselves when quantifying your claim. We also hire experts such as vocational experts and actuaries to scientifically calculate your losses under all these heads of damage to put your file on the best possible foot forward.
DISCLAIMER: The publications on this website are intended to provide information of a general nature and not legal advice. The information contained in this publication is current to the date of the publication and may be subject to change following the publication date.