How Are Damages Calculated in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

For many victims of serious accidents caused by the negligence of another person or entity, figuring out how much compensation they can claim through a personal injury claim can prove paramount.

If you suffered serious injuries in an accident, you may have a lot of financial woes, from medical bills to the lost wages that leave you under considerable financial strain during your recovery.

How do lawyers and insurance companies calculate the damages awarded in a personal injury claim?

Most of the time, lawyers and insurance companies start with a set formula that includes the specific financial losses you have faced, as well as the pain and suffering that went along with your accident.

Item #1: Medical Costs

Your medical costs after an accident will set the stage for the rest of your claim.

If you suffered relatively minor injuries, you probably have relatively low medical bills and, while you may suffer serious limitations on your personal life and activities because of those injuries, they will probably remain less invasive than a more serious injury.

On the other hand, if you suffered severe injuries in your accident, you may receive high medical bills and suffer multiple losses in your personal life, including a great deal of time off work and serious limitations on your personal life.

In calculating the damages you deserve for your personal injury claim, your lawyer will likely start by taking a look at all of the medical bills you have had to pay as a direct result of your injuries.

Your Current Medical Expenses

After a serious accident, medical bills may start adding up fast. Those medical bills may include:

#1. Emergency Medical Care

The cost of ambulance transport alone can wind up costing hundreds of dollars. More intensive emergency medical care, like care in the emergency room, can cost thousands. That emergency medical care serves to save your life after an accident. It may help preserve your overall mobility and quality of life.

At the same time, however, it begins the avalanche of medical bills that you may see after the accident.

#2. Hospitalization (And the Associated Procedures)

Following severe injuries, you can expect to spend considerable time in the hospital immediately after your accident. You may, in some cases, expect to spend weeks in recovery. Some injuries will land you in the ICU, while others may allow you to remain in a regular room. If you do spend time in the ICU or a Critical Care Unit, you may find yourself with very high medical bills related to that care.

In addition, you may receive separate bills for any treatments, including surgeries that you received while in the hospital. Suppose, for example, that you have surgery to treat broken bones, for which you must remain in the hospital for a couple of days. You will likely have bills from the hospital itself, from the surgeon who set your broken bones, and from the anesthesiologist who performed the surgery.

All those bills can add up considerably. If you know you have a long list of medical bills coming in, you may want to set aside a specific file for those bills—especially since you may have more than one bill for the same procedure, due to multiple parties providing medical care services. Keeping up with your medical bills upfront can make it much easier to put them together later as part of a personal injury claim.

#3. Long-Term Care

Following some injuries, even when you leave the hospital, you may not return home. You may need to go to a long-term care facility, where you can receive support with a variety of activities. Some long-term care facilities simply offer additional support that you could not receive at home.

Others may focus heavily on rehabilitation services, which can increase your odds of making a full recovery or streamline that recovery process so that you can get back to normal as soon as possible.

Even if you can return home, you may need support to allow you to keep up with your daily self-care tasks or maintain activities of daily life. Some accident victims use an in-home care provider to offer them vital assistance with a variety of services, including self-care, medication management, or in-home therapy. Home health providers can offer those services and provide vitally-needed support in the aftermath of the accident.

#4. Durable Medical Equipment

Sometimes, medical equipment can help aid in mobility after your accident or allow you to return home despite continuing limitations. For example, you might need a wheelchair to get around, or you might need a portable oxygen concentrator or breathing machine to help aid in your breathing overnight.

Those durable medical equipment costs can add up substantially, especially if you need a great deal of equipment or have to replace that equipment regularly.

#5. Therapy

After your accident, therapy can help you get back to normal.

Many accident victims need considerable therapy in several areas, depending on the extent of their injuries and the limitations they face as a result.

• Psychological therapy helps accident victims learn how to cope with the mental and emotional impacts of their accident and their injuries. Many accident victims find themselves suffering from anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms, all of which can have a considerable impact on their daily lives. Psychological therapy can help them work through those concerns and get them back to normal sooner.
• Physical therapy helps victims regain strength, flexibility, and mobility. Physical therapists help accident victims with a series of exercises designed to help enhance or regain physical strength following an accident. Physical therapists may also help victims retain their strength and avoid muscle atrophy, even when they have to remain confined to bed after the accident. Physical therapy may continue for some time after the initial accident, especially if the victim has extreme weakness or needs more time to regain strength.
• Occupational therapy provides victims with coping strategies for many of the challenges they may face every day while dealing with the aftermath of their injuries. Occupational therapists help find workarounds that make it easier for victims with severe limitations to accomplish basic self-care tasks, from brushing their teeth and eating to getting around.

An occupational therapist might, for example, suggest apps for a traumatic brain injury patient who has trouble remembering to take vitally needed medication or help a patient with an arm amputation learn how to use just one arm to accomplish many of the tasks he has to take on every day.

Anticipated Future Medical Costs

Sometimes, you do not yet know what your actual medical bills from an accident will look like. Complications could lead to increased medical bills, especially if you suffer setbacks on your road to recovery.

You might need more than one procedure to treat an injury, even if your doctor originally hoped that one would prove sufficient. You might discover that your injuries cause more long-term limitations than you thought, or that you do not progress in physical or occupational therapy as quickly as your care provider had hoped.

In most cases, your lawyer will recommend waiting until you have a solid idea of what your recovery will look like—and therefore how much your medical bills will likely add up—before you put your personal injury claim together.

Sometimes, however, you may need to reach a settlement agreement before you have fully healed from your injuries, or you may have long-term medical needs that you will need to take into consideration when putting together your claim. For example, a spinal cord injury victim might know that he will face the need for ongoing medical care for the rest of his life, which must factor into the settlement he asks for.

In other cases, you might discover that your injuries will require future procedures, but you might not want or need to have those procedures done now. For example, if you suffered a knee injury, you might know that you will need a knee replacement within five to ten years, but prefer to wait until you reach that mark to have the procedure. You can include that future anticipated cost as part of your claim.

A lawyer can work with your care providers to establish what your future medical needs will likely look like and to assign an amount to those future medical costs, where possible. Those future medical bills can prove just as critical as your current medical bills, so you want to make sure that your provider considers them.

Item #2: Missing Wages

Serious injuries can mean a heavy hit to your income in addition to the bills you may face after your accident. Your accident may prevent you from working, especially in the immediate aftermath of that accident.

You may have injuries like traumatic brain injury that make it impossible for you to complete your usual job duties due to cognitive struggles, or injuries like broken bones that can make it very difficult to take on your usual job tasks, especially if they involve heavy lifting.

Your employer might work with you to help get you back to work as soon as possible, or your employer might prefer that you remain out of work until you make a full recovery, especially if you have injuries that could pose a danger to you or others in the workplace if you attempt to complete your usual job tasks.

Your lawyer will work with you to calculate your missing wages. That does not just include the actual time at work that you missed immediately after your accident.

You may also include things like:

• The time you had to miss due to follow-up appointments
• The time you missed for physical or occupational therapy
• Returning to work on a part-time schedule, rather than your usual full-time hours, as you recovered from the accident
• Lost vacation time that you used to cover some of the hours you had to miss at work

Item #3: Property Damage

In addition to your injuries, did your accident involve significant property damage? Many auto accidents, for example, mean substantial damage to the vehicle involved in the crash as well as injury to the people involved in the accident.

Talk to your lawyer about any damaged items. You may need to take some items, like a damaged vehicle, into a repair shop to get an estimate for the cost of repairs.

Item #4: Pain and Suffering

In many cases, personal injury claims will include compensation for the pain and suffering you faced after the accident. Pain and suffering include losses that do not have a direct financial correlation.

Talk to your lawyer about the suffering caused by your accident, which may include factors like:

• Emotional distress, including increased anxiety, depression, or PTSD
• Missed opportunities
• Missed activities
• Challenges in your relationships with friends and family members
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Frustration related to loss of independence

How Insurance Companies May Calculate Compensation

While insurance companies may take into consideration the direct financial losses you have faced due to your accident, including your medical bills, property damage, and lost wages, they may not calculate factors like your pain and suffering automatically.

Furthermore, many insurance companies have an AI program that calculates compensation based on a percentage of the actual losses you suffered. You might receive a settlement offer from the insurance company that reflects far less than the compensation you actually deserve for your injuries.

A Lawyer Can Help You Calculate and Pursue the Compensation You Deserve

Many personal injury plaintiffs find that working with a lawyer can go a long way toward helping them establish the compensation they really deserve for their injuries, then fighting for that much-needed financial coverage for losses sustained due to someone else’s negligence. Contacting a personal injury lawyer after your accident can help you understand your options.