If you’ve been in an accident and suffered injuries, you have the right to bring a personal injury lawsuit against the person who is liable for your injuries. Most of these lawsuits are settled out of court, and it’s always important to work with a Salt Lake City, UT personal injury lawyer who has lots of experience with personal injury cases. A lawyer can help you properly calculate all your damages, which is not as easy as it might seem at first glance.
How Does Your Personal Injury Lawyer in Salt Lake City, UT Calculate Damages in Your Lawsuit?
Types of Damages
Calculations start by evaluating the three types of damages that could apply in your case. Your economic damages are the foundation of your claim and include all the monetary losses you’ve sustained that can be easily proven with bills and receipts. Perhaps the most obvious of these will be your medical bills, but you’ll also want to include any lost wages or salary; property damage that needed to be repaired; and any other things you’ve had to pay for that directly relate to the accident.
The second type of damages that will apply are non-economic damages. These are commonly known as “pain and suffering” and are much more difficult to calculate because you can’t put a number on mental anguish. They will be calculated with reference to your economic damages, and these are frequently challenged by insurance companies. It’s important to work with a qualified lawyer who can help you calculate these damages, as well. Finally, some cases qualify for punitive damages. Punitive damages are only awarded in about 5% of cases nationwide, and only a lawyer can tell you if there’s any chance that they may apply in your case.
Calculating Economic Damages
The first step is calculating your economic losses. It’s important to get these right because you will use your final number here to figure out what your non-economic damages should be. The higher your economic losses, the higher your non-economic losses are likely to be. Your lawyer will start by gathering up all bills and receipts for treatment of your injury, but that’s just the beginning.
You have to make sure you remember everything: not just the initial emergency room visit, but all follow-up treatment, physical therapy, medications, and any mental health treatment that you are referred to because of your physical injuries. If your physical injuries are so bad that you will require ongoing treatment, then you’ll need to calculate for future medical losses. This can be very difficult. Making this kind of calculation requires an educated guess as to what your medical needs will be as well as how much those treatments will cost into the future. Your lawyer will likely need to bring in economic experts to help make this determination.
You’ll also need to calculate how much money you’ve lost because you couldn’t go to work. And you will need to calculate more than just the hourly wage for hours that you missed or the amount of your salary that’s been docked. If you had to use up paid vacation days or paid personal days to recover, you should be reimbursed for that loss. If you typically take about seven hours of overtime in a week, for example, and those hours were available while you were laid up, and the only reason that you could not take them was your injury, then you should also be reimbursed. Finally, there may be other things you should be reimbursed for, such as having to pay for childcare if you are unable to care for your children due to your injuries.
Calculating Non-Economic Damages
There are two commonly accepted methods for calculating these damages, but the calculations are always something of a guess. Because it’s not possible, and indeed it is inappropriate, to try to put a dollar number on someone’s pain or the mental anguish they have suffered, these have to be done carefully. You’ll also need to be able to prove some of this suffering, often by showing a journal that details the pain levels you’ve experienced on a daily basis since the accident or through the testimony of friends and family. You can claim non-economic damages for loss of enjoyment of life if you’ve been prohibited from taking part in an activity or hobby that you would normally have enjoyed because of your injuries.
Once you’ve calculated your economic damages, the first method of calculating non-economic damages is to multiply your economic damages by a number between one and five. If you had minor injuries that healed quickly and without complication, you would typically multiply your economic damages by one. If you had extreme injuries that will cause you to suffer lifelong disability, such as paralysis, you would use the number five as your multiplier. Everything else will fall somewhere between those two extremes. Again, you will need evidence to prove why you’ve chosen the number you have, and your lawyer is the best one to advise you here.
The other common way of calculating non-economic damages is to ask for a dollar amount for each day that you suffered. Sometimes it’s easier for a jury to think in this context. When they see you in court after you’ve had some time to heal and haven’t themselves experienced the injuries and losses that you sustained, hearing a big number like $500,000 can be off-putting. It may be easy for the other side to argue that this is simply “unfair and greedy.” But if your lawyer suggests a small number, like $250, which would then be multiplied by the same number of days that you suffered, this is a much easier thing to grasp. It doesn’t seem so shocking, and juries can often think in terms of daily suffering more easily. Your lawyer will help you to decide the best way to calculate your non-economic damages and to present them, depending on your unique situation.
Comparative Fault Issues
If you were partially to blame for your accident, your compensation will be reduced by the same percentage as your fault. If you are 20% at fault, for example, you would only be able to recover 80% of your actual damages. If you’re more than 49% at fault, you can’t make a claim at all.
Thus it’s very important to work with a lawyer who can help you properly calculate your full damages so that any losses from comparative fault have a minimal effect. You also want a lawyer who can protect you against an insurance company that may very well try to push more blame on you to minimize their own losses. It can be very difficult to calculate fault in an accident, and your lawyer will work hard to bring the evidence to bear to show precisely who is to blame and to what degree.
Studies show that people who bring personal injury claims without a lawyer almost always get a smaller settlement than those who have a lawyer’s help. And that’s even after the lawyer’s fees are considered!
Contact Our Experienced Personal Injury Lawyers Today
Whatever your situation, reach out to the experienced attorneys at RamRock Injury Law today for a free case evaluation. We proudly serve clients across Utah. Visit us at our Salt Lake City office:
RamRock Injury Law – Salt Lake City Office
5353 South 960 East Suite 200
Salt Lake City, Utah 84117
Phone: (866) 427-5167
