Serious injuries are painful and traumatic. It adds to the distress when your injury was preventable if only someone else had taken reasonable care, but they failed to do so, putting you in harm’s way. While it’s true that no legal action can erase an injury that’s already occurred, a claim against the at-fault party’s appropriate insurance, like auto insurance after an accident or premises liability insurance after a slip and fall, provides crucial compensation for injury-related damages, including medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. It’s fairly easy to add up tangible damages like medical expenses, but how do personal injury attorneys in Van Nuys arrive at a figure for pain and suffering damages?
Consulting With Medical Experts After a Personal Injury
Often, the attorney for a personal injury victim consults with medical experts to gain a better understanding of the full effect of their client’s injury. This includes not only the impact of the injury on the injury victim’s ability to work, but also the level of pain associated with the injury and the amount of time they expect the injury victim to suffer pain until they reach maximum medical improvement. This information provides the basis for calculating a monetary amount for pain and suffering damages. Then, most attorneys use one of two methods to calculate pain and suffering damages to arrive at a figure to seek in settlement negotiations.
The Per Diem Method of Pain and Suffering Calculation
The per diem method is a popular formula used by personal injury attorneys to determine a suitable figure for the pain and suffering portion of a settlement for damages. This method first uses medical expert knowledge to determine the severity of the injury victim’s pain on a scale of 1 to 10 and assigns a monetary value to each day. For example, $200 per day. Then they determine how many total days the injury victim can expect to suffer pain until reaching their maximum improvement—say 100 days. They multiply the daily amount by the number of days the injury victim is likely to experience pain. In the above example, the attorney would seek $20,000 for the injury victim’s pain and suffering.
The Multiplier Method for Calculating Pain and Suffering Damages
The multiplier method is another way to assign a dollar amount to pain and suffering. When using this method, the attorney first totals the injury victim’s medical expenses, lost wages, and other financial damages. Then, they multiply this total by a number between 1 and 5, depending on the level of pain a medical expert states that the victim is likely to feel and the severity of the injury. The final amount of expenses multiplied by the pain level number is the amount sought for pain and suffering in settlement negotiations.
Why Assign a Monetary Amount for Pain and Suffering?
Sometimes, defendants and their insurance companies in personal injury cases resist paying out on non-economic damages like intangible pain and suffering; however, the initial pain of sustaining the injury itself, painful medical procedures, lengthy recovery time, and often excruciating physical therapy are typically the worst and most life-altering aspects of an injury. Injury victims deserve compensation for the losses associated with severe or chronic pain, which can interfere with daily activities and make it difficult to accomplish tasks that the injury victim once did without a second thought. Severe pain causes loss of enjoyment of life or diminished quality of life. Injury victims deserve compensation for these losses.
