What Does “Pain & Suffering” Mean in a Personal Injury Case?
LAW BLOG •
If you recently suffered harm in a Texas car accident and believe that someone else may be legally responsible, you may be able to gain compensation for both the monetary and nonmonetary losses that result. Monetary losses include damages such as medical bills, lost wages, and the cost of future care. Nonmonetary losses, on the other hand, address intangible damages such as pain and suffering. What does this term mean, and how does your personal injury attorney determine how much your emotional anguish is worth following an accident?
Defining Pain and Suffering
Not all injuries are immediately visible following a car accident. Some injuries manifest as emotional or physical distress, which are not as calculable as the cost of an X-ray or surgical consultation. For personal injury claims, there are two main types of pain and suffering:
- Physical pain and suffering regards an injured party’s actual injuries. It includes the pain and discomfort that a plaintiff suffers throughout the course of his or her recovery, but also addresses any future pain he or she can expect in the future because of the defendant’s negligence.
- Mental pain and suffering also results from the plaintiff’s physical injuries, but more so represents a byproduct of the victim’s experience. Mental pain and suffering can include emotional distress, loss in life quality, emotional anguish, fear, anxiety, humiliation, or any other psychological effect that can result from being involved in a car accident. Mental pain and suffering can also include treatment for PTSD if the experience was traumatic enough to cause the disorder. Like physical suffering, damages resulting from mental pain and suffering address not only current harm, but what a plaintiff can expect to incur in the future.
How Does a Personal Injury Attorney Calculate Pain and Suffering?
It can be difficult to determine what non monetary losses are worth. Judges do not provide juries much guidance for determining an appropriate compensation amount for pain and suffering – for example, there are no charts that juries can reference to determine an award. Rather, a judge simply instructs a jury to use its good sense to determine what’s reasonable and fair to a plaintiff.
There are two main methods your attorney or an insurance company may use when calculating pain and suffering damages in a personal injury case:
- The multiplier method uses a plaintiff’s total economic damages and multiplies it by a number between 1.5 and 4. The multiplier used often serves as the sticking point in negotiations, as it must be reflective of the plaintiff’s suffering. For example, a wrongful death or incapacitating injury will have a higher multiplier than accidents in which a plaintiff expects to make a full recovery.
- The per diem method is less common, but an insurer may occasionally use it when determining damages for pain and suffering. This method assumes that physical and mental suffering are at least as equal to the amount of suffering involved with going to work each day. As such, it takes your daily work earnings and multiplies it by the number of days you expect to suffer. For example, if you require six months of rehabilitation for an injured limb, you might arrive at your non monetary damages by multiplying the amount you make in a day’s work by 180 days. If you make $150 a day, your non monetary damages would be around $27,000.
No matter which method you use, a personal injury attorney will work hard to defend your right to fair compensation for both your monetary and non monetary damages under Texas law. If you believe that someone else is legally responsible for your injuries, contacting a Houston personal injury attorney is the first step.
The post What Does “Pain & Suffering” Mean in a Personal Injury Case? appeared first on GES Injury Attorneys.
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