Generally, an individual injured in an automobile accident may bring a claim or lawsuit to recover the actual expenses associated with property damage and medical costs, economic damages, and emotional and physical pain and suffering. Litigation involving motor vehicle accidents can be extremely complicated. Retaining an experienced car accident lawyer familiar with motor vehicle accident damages will place you in the best position to receive the recovery that you deserve.
What Damages Can I Recover from a Car Accident Injury?
In car accident cases, the injured party may recover damages for:
- physical pain and suffering
- mental pain and suffering
- medical and rehabilitative expenses
- past and future lost income
- permanent impairment and disfigurement
Typical damages may also include future medical bills that are reasonably certain, loss of enjoyment of life, and physical property damage. A previous injury does not necessarily affect the right to recover compensation. The injured party may still recover damages for re-injuring or aggravating the earlier injury. In order to document the damages, a person injured in an accident should keep a daily diary describing how the injury affects him or her and his or her immediate family.
Family Member’s Damages
The spouse of the accident victim may also be able to recover for damage to the marital relationship. Both the husband and wife usually bring the claim, which is known as “loss of consortium.”
Loss of consortium generally refers to any negative effect on the marital relationship caused by the accident, and includes loss of the spouse’s love, companionship, comfort, affection, solace, moral support, sexual relations, ability to have children, and physical assistance in the operating and maintaining a home. Loss of consortium can be either temporary or permanent.
Insurance
Typically, an insurance policy will cover the victim’s damages. If the other driver has insufficient insurance or is not insured at all, the victim may be entitled to compensation from his or her own insurance company under an “uninsured” or “underinsured motorist” provision.
How Much Money Can I Expect to Receive for my Car Accident Settlement Claim?
The value of an automobile accident case depends on a number of factors, including how the particular state looks at fault, how easily the other party’s fault can be established, the type and seriousness of the injuries, the type of medical treatment required, and the amount of insurance coverage available. Other relevant factors may include how the accident happened, the extent of vehicle damage involved, whether the injuries are permanent or involve significant scarring, the amount of your past and expected future medical bills, and the effect of the accident on your income. Every personal injury case is different. Therefore, the assistance of an attorney experienced in handling automobile accident cases, is vital to determine the fair value of your personal injury claim.
Pain And Suffering
Quantifying Pain
Clearly, no one can plug an amount of pain into an equation and come up with a dollar figure in regards to how much someone’s pain is worth. However, duration of pain can be quantified to an extent, particularly if someone will endure some degree of pain for the rest of his or her life. Pain is a sensation that can only be experienced by the person who lives inside the body that has been harmed, and courts all over the United States have allowed for these damages to be awarded simply to compensate deserving plaintiffs with some form of monetary award designed to help them deal with and fight against the pain they feel and are suffering from because of the negligence of someone else.
Explaining Suffering
Suffering is another experience that generally cannot be quantified. However, anyone who has been harmed by a negligent driver in a Florida car accident will undoubtedly be dealing with a lower quality of life than what he or she enjoyed before the accident occurred. Suffering describes and attempts to put into legal terms the reality that someone can no longer do certain things, experience certain things or enjoy certain things as much as they did before they were wrongfully harmed.
What Damages Can I Recover From my Car Accident Claim?
Hospital Stays
While costs between hospitals can vary and sometimes vary widely, the average cost of a hospital stay generally comes in at approximately $3,000 per day. Therefore, if someone is injured badly enough to require a hospital stay of one week, it will lead to a total cost of more than $20,000. While some people with health insurance will have some of these costs covered, most policies do not cover every dime of those costs.
Surgery Costs
People who are injured in Florida car accidents can be in need of any number of different surgeries ranging from repairing and setting broken bones to back surgery to neurosurgery for brain injuries. Once again, no two surgical costs are exactly alike, but knee surgeries can cost upwards of $20,000 and brain surgeries can cost anywhere between $50,000 and $250,000, depending on the complexity of the procedure needed.
Lost Income
People who are injured badly enough in Florida car accidents that they will miss work or even have to move into a different vocation altogether stand to lose a high amount of income, and this can be a loss that never stops hurting the person who has been harmed. If someone was earning $60,000 and is unable to work for three months, that equals $15,000 in lost earnings that will not be available to pay the simple monthly bills that are part of everyone’s life.