What Can You Sue for in a Personal Injury Case?

In many personal injury claims, the injured party needs as much compensation as possible for that act of negligence. After all, you may have huge expenses for treating your injuries, from the cost of your medical bills to the need to modify your home to account for them. Clients often question how much compensation they can recover. What does a personal injury claim cover? What falls under a personal injury claim, and which expenses do you simply have to handle on your own?

When you file a personal injury claim, the liable party will not have to take care of your bills directly, whether you need help managing your medical costs or taking care of other bills while you recover. However, a personal injury claim can provide you with the funds you need to help manage those expenses.

1. Your Medical Costs

Most personal injury claims start with a request for compensation for the medical bills you sustained as a direct result of the accident whether that means direct medical bills obtained because of treatment for injuries or medical bills because your new injuries made an existing condition worse.

Keeping up with medical bills following a severe accident can be incredibly complex. You may need a lawyer to help you break down which items count as actual medical expenses and which may fall into other categories. However, in general, any medical expense from the accident can count as an expense for which you may claim compensation.

#1.1. Emergency Transport and Care

Many people do not realize how expensive emergency care can grow after an accident. Ambulance transport, for example, may cost more than $1,200. Then, you may need to receive care in the emergency room. You may receive a bill from the emergency room itself as well as specific statements from the care providers that see you in the emergency room. If you require additional treatment, including surgery, you may also have bills for those specific treatments.

#1.2. Hospitalization

Depending on your injuries, you may spend a considerable amount of time in the hospital immediately after your accident. You may need to have a medical care professional observe you and your recovery, or you might find that you need additional procedures that require you to stay in the hospital.

In addition to staying in the hospital following your accident, you may need to go from the hospital to a long-term care facility or rehabilitation facility. There, you can receive a higher level of care than you might get if you remained at home while recovering from your injuries. Those extended stays, and the ongoing medical care that often goes with them, can come with heavy price tags that you must consider when putting together a personal injury claim.

#1.3. Ongoing Procedures

Many injuries may require ongoing procedures for you to get the complete treatment you need. In the case of some injuries, you may need multiple surgeries. You may need to have outpatient procedures that can help raise your odds of making a full recovery, or you may need to have inpatient procedures that require you to spend additional time in the hospital. Try to keep track of the medical bills related to those procedures since putting together those bills can be difficult following your accident.

#1.4. Durable Medical Equipment

Injuries that impact your mobility may require you to use items like wheelchairs or crutches to get around, which can quickly become very expensive. For example, a standard, manual wheelchair costs around $500. On the other hand, a power chair can cost as much as $30,000, depending on the features attached. You may also need equipment like an at-home respirator or oxygen concentrator to help with injuries that impact your ability to breathe. The more durable medical equipment you need to function, the higher your treatment costs may grow after your accident.

#1.5. Therapy

You may go through physical or occupational therapy following a serious injury, often long-term. Physical therapy helps the victims of serious accidents regain some of the strength and mobility they lost in the accident. Occupational therapy, on the other hand, helps victims find ways to work around their new limitations—whether that means learning how to use apps and labeling to help with the disorientation and memory problems that can accompany traumatic brain injury, learning how to use a wheelchair, or learning how to cope with one arm or leg following a traumatic amputation.

Therapy may also, in some cases, include psychological therapy that helps you learn how to cope with the limitations you have faced following your accident. Many accident victims find that they suffer from increased levels of depression or anxiety, or even that they suffer from PTSD following the incident. Working with a mental health professional can help them work through many of those difficulties.

#1.6. Home Modifications

Some types of injuries, especially those that result in permanent disability, may require you to make modifications to your home to live there independently after your accident. For example, you may need to widen doorways so that a wheelchair will easily fit through, install wheelchair ramps, or open up a bedroom to account for additional medical equipment. Those home modifications can become very expensive, especially if you need to make multiple modifications to make your home livable. In some cases, your lawyer may include those home modification amounts as part of your medical expenses as you file a personal injury claim.

2. Property Damage

Following some types of accidents, like car accidents, you may have the right to claim compensation for damage to your personal property caused by someone else’s negligence.

Most notably, you have the right to claim compensation for property damage in cases of large-scale damage to expensive items. For example, you will need to claim compensation for the damage to your vehicle following a car accident. If you damage a tablet or smartphone in a slip and fall, you might also have the right to claim compensation for that loss.

Talk to your lawyer about the property damage you may have faced as a direct result of your accident. An attorney can let you know whether you have the right to seek compensation for that property damage and how to best include it as part of your claim.

3. Lost Income

Many injuries can make it impossible for you to work immediately after the accident. You may find yourself out of work for days, weeks, or even months as you manage the aftermath of your injury.

That lost work often means a substantial loss of income. Even if your employer provides temporary disability insurance, you may not have your total income coming in. Some people work in industries that do not routinely provide paid time off for injuries or illness. You may find yourself without your regular source of income at a time when you have bills piling up faster than ever before.

Lost income may mean the income you lose immediately after your accident, but it does not have to just include those dates. It may also include other times that you miss work, or other income or earning potential that you lose, as a result of your accident.

Your lawyer may look at several key concerns when determining how much compensation you can claim for lost wages.

#3.1. How much time at work did you have to miss immediately after the accident?

How much time did you spend out of work after the accident, while you were first recovering from your injuries? Often, serious injuries may mean weeks or months out of work—and the loss of income that goes along with those lost hours.

The time you miss at work immediately after the accident may depend on your employer, the job duties you regularly perform, and your injuries. Some employers will help you get back to work as soon as possible. They may, for example, allow you to work remotely, or bring you back into the office on limited job duties as soon as you have the physical ability to get there. On the other hand, other employers may prefer that you wait. They may not feel that you can perform your job thoroughly, they may want you to focus on your recovery, or they may think that having you on the job floor can lead to unsafe circumstances for others.

#3.2. Did you have to limit your hours at work after returning?

You got back to work as soon as you could, likely because you could not lose that source of income, but your injuries prevented you from working a full-time schedule. You might have had to limit yourself to part-time hours or only work a certain number of days each week rather than working the full-time hours you worked before the accident.

#3.3. Did you have to use vacation time to cover some of your time off work?

In some organizations, employees can use their stored vacation time to help cover some of the time they had to spend out of work due to a severe accident. Unfortunately, that means you no longer have that time for other purposes, which means you might not have it to use for later family vacations. You may have the right to include things like vacation time in your personal injury claim.

#3.4. Did you have to miss work on an ongoing basis for therapy or follow-up appointments, including future procedures?

You could head back to work immediately after your accident, or within a few weeks, but you still had to attend appointments: physical therapy, follow-ups with your care provider, or even future procedures, including additional surgeries. Sound familiar? Those lost hours can add up quickly, whether they eat into your vacation time or leave you struggling with decreased income during your recovery.

4. Pain and Suffering

Many of the damages associated with a severe injury fall into the economic category: tangible losses with physical values that you can assign as you pursue compensation. However, for many victims, some of the worst damages do not have a financial value.

You may suffer immense physical pain from your injuries. Your limitations could prevent you from engaging in the activities you usually enjoy most. You may even lose relationships with friends and family members in the aftermath of your accident since you cannot spend time with them the way you did before.

Your injuries may prevent you from caring for yourself. You might have scarring that causes extreme embarrassment or, in some cases, prevents you from getting outside. You may have a hard time interacting normally with people.

In addition, many people who suffer from severe injuries in an accident suffer from increased emotional distress. They have high rates of depression, anxiety, or even PTSD, all of which can add up to a profound long-term impact.

As part of your personal injury claim, you could include compensation for the pain and suffering you faced following an accident. An attorney can help you quantify the suffering you have faced and include it as part of your claim.

An Attorney Can Help Break Down Compensation for Your Personal Injury Claim

If you suffered severe injuries in an accident, an attorney could help you learn more about the compensation you may deserve and how to pursue it.

While an attorney cannot guarantee the compensation you will recover, by working with an attorney, you can get a much better idea of what to expect if you receive a settlement offer from the insurance company or how to proceed as you work through a personal injury claim.

Contact a personal injury lawyer as soon after your accident as possible to learn more about the compensation you may deserve.