Calculating pain and suffering damages from car accidents
When you are a victim of personal injury, you may be entitled to compensation for the pain and suffering that you incurred from the car accident. When the Plaintiff and Defendant in a personal injury case are negotiating a settlement, most of the time is spent on the value that should be placed on pain and suffering.
Usually, the money amount of medical bills serves as a benchmark for determining pain and suffering damages. If you didn’t suffer any broken bones, then you are considered to have sustained a soft tissue injury. If you sustained injury, which can be shown on diagnostic imaging studies (i.e. x-ray, MRI, CT Scan), then you have sustained a hard injury.
With soft tissue injury, usually a 1:1 ratio of medical bills to pain and suffering is reasonable compensation. For example, if you have chiropractic bills of $5,000.00, the pain and suffering damages of roughly $5,000.00 is reasonable.
With hard injury cases, the pain and suffering damages should be 3-5 times the amount of the medical bills. For example, if you have medical bills of $20,000.00 and you sustained hard injury, then your pain and suffering damages should be $60,000 to $100,000.
Another approach that is used in determining pain and suffering damages is the per diem approach. In this approach, you figure how much money per day a member of the jury would accept to endure the Plaintiff’s pain and suffering multiplied by the number of days of suffering. For example, if you are injured for 100 days and the jury says they would accept $100 per day to endure your pain and suffering, then the pain and suffering damages is $10,000.00.
Pain and suffering damages are impacted by several factors including type of injury, age at time of injury, occupation at time of injury, marital status at time of injury, whether you will have permanent disability, whether you have a deformity etc.
If you want to know more information about pain and suffering damages, contact our personal injury attorney today.
