When you suffer from injuries in a car accident and feel that there was some wrongdoing by a third party that collided with your car, then you must approach the lawyers for car accidents in Highland to understand if you have a case for claiming compensation. Since personal injury claims follow a legal process, it is imperative to seek legal guidance and entrust your case to a personal injury lawyer to navigate the legal process and recover fair compensation from the offending party.
The most critical part of personal injury cases is computing the value of the injuries and damages. The lawyer uses several techniques to calculate the amount of the damages that constitute the claim amount. It requires considerable expertise, legal knowledge, and experience handling personal injury cases to assign a monetary value for every damage and injury suffered during the accident.
Types of damages suffered by accident victims
Personal injury lawsuits are all about damages of various kinds, and it is vital to understand what constitutes damages according to the personal injury laws. The lawyer first makes a list of the damages and then starts putting some value against it based on sound reasoning supported by the proof of calculation. It is easy to convince the insurance settlers or the judge presiding over the case. The most visible injuries that often form the chunk of the claim are the costs of medical treatment that can be pretty high because of the case’s complexity, like brain injuries.
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In addition, there are many more losses like loss of earnings due to abstinence from work until recovering fully from the injuries, inability to spend quality time with family, and many other losses, both physical and mental. Pain and suffering is a typical loss in personal injury cases.
Compensatory damages and special damages
The compensation amount can vary grossly since each accident is unique, but most personal injury claims comprise compensatory and punitive damages.
Compensatory damages – The focus of personal injury laws is to compensate the plaintiff or accident victim in some way so that the injured person can regain wholeness for the harm undergone due to the injuries from the accident by using the money received as compensation. The victim must prove that the injuries happened only because of the accident. Compensatory damages apply for victims of auto accidents, slip and falls, and medical malpractice. Wrongful deaths are also included in this category, but the compensation goes to the surviving families.
Special damages – Special damages mainly include the monetary losses of the victims. They are easier to calculate because most of these are tangible items like medical bills for treatment and the cost of future treatment, loss of earning for missed work, and the projected losses of future earnings. Loss of property or damage to property is also part of special damages.
Some other damages in personal injury cases are pain and suffering, emotional distress, physical impairment like amputation, scarring or disfigurement, loss of consortium, and loss of enjoyment in life.
