If you want to learn more about how insurance companies calculate pain and suffering after an accident, or how much money you can get in your particular situation, it’s in your best interest to speak with a personal injury attorney as soon as possible. Insurance companies want to pay you as little as possible–they’re not exactly looking out for your well-being.
Fortunately, many personal injury attorneys offer a free initial consultation to help you accurately calculate the damage you may suffer, including pain and suffering.
Online pain and distress calculators can’t calculate the actual amount of injury you could suffer without a full understanding of your accident, your injuries and how those injuries will affect your life and future. If you are involved in a serious accident, you may experience a great deal of “pain and suffering,”, a general category of loss (“damage” in legal language) that is not easily understood by most accident claimants.
How Pain and Suffering Can Be Calculated
In car and motorcycle accidents, the amount of damage to your vehicle may affect the amount of pain and suffering premium you can receive. Pain and damage done can seem especially difficult to calculate based on past results because two people can get the same injury but experience different levels of pain.
Regardless of the method of calculation used, the longer it takes to treat or recover from a car accident, the more money the insurance company will typically allocate to cover pain and suffering.
Let’s say you have a total economic loss caused by an accident of $5,000. If the claimants’ medical bills for the car crash are $4,000 and a multiplier of 2 is used, the approximate cost of pain and suffering applicants can receive is $8,000 ($4,000 in medical bills x 2). In cases where the injuries were minor, the passenger could receive up to $3,000 in a claim. However, in severe traffic accidents, where the damage is more serious, passengers can receive up to $1 million in pain and suffering.
Pain and Suffering from Someone Else’s Negligence
If you are injured as a result of someone else’s negligence, whether it be a car accident, a skid and fall or any other personal injury, you can claim damages from the party at fault, including pain and suffering.
If you are harmed because of someone else’s negligence, you can file a personal injury compensation claim against their insurance company or a lawsuit seeking compensation for your injuries.
After a car accident, in addition to recovering from injuries and getting the car back on the road, a key issue is how you get compensation for the damage caused. Medical bills and property damage can get expensive after an accident and hospitalization, and you may have been unable to work while recovering from your injuries.
You Can’t Predict How Long You’ll Be in Pain
You may also be suffering from a permanent disability with pain that won’t go away. For example, living with pain for a few months is bad, but living with pain for the rest of your life is even worse. There is no account or bill for your pain and suffering, and two people may be suffering from the same traumas, but their levels of emotional pain and suffering can be very different because each person experiences things differently. While it can be relatively easy for jurors to determine the amount of compensation for economic damage – since they can see these figures reflected in documented medical bills and lost wages – they often struggle to assess the monetary value of someone’s pain and suffering.
Estimating non-economic damages can be tricky because you can’t provide a dollar amount for pain or provide a written receipt for suffering, and you can fix your car or pay medical bills. With this method, your lawyer will take your total economic damage and multiply it by a certain factor to determine the value of your non-economic damage. For example, to calculate your medical injuries, add up all medical expenses since the date of the injury and any future medical expenses you anticipate.
If your doctor’s bill is $1,200 and your MRI bill is $2,000, you can calculate damages of $3,200 for medical expenses. As a general rule, you can get anywhere from half to five times the amount of your special damages claim. The insurance company will then multiply the daily value by the number of days you will spend recovering from a car accident and be more likely to suffer the adverse effects of an accident.
These types of injuries are calculated differently from physical injuries such as whiplash or other back injuries. The affected person almost always also suffers non-pecuniary damage that cannot be easily assessed.
Your entire injury is the non-financial loss you suffer, from emotional stress to physical pain. Permanent injury, disability and inability to work are all losses that fall into this category. For example, you may report emotional distress, loss of companionship, loss of financial support, loss of parental support, or other harm.
The Bottom Line in Pain and Suffering Costs
Because pain and suffering are not economic damages, lawyers, juries, and insurance agents must use measures other than price tags to determine how much a motor vehicle damages claim costs. While in practice there are many factors that can affect the determination of the pain and suffering allowance, in most cases the most important factor that will determine the correct amount awarded will be the overall medical expenses and the nature and extent of your injury.