Most personal injury claims are not settled in court. They are taken care of without litigation, which is when you take the lawsuit through the court system. This is mostly because of financial and time constraints. To put it as simple as possible, it is just much more preferred to reach an injury settlement that is reasonable than to go through the court process.
The problem here is determining the value of damages in personal injury cases. We all know that in a truck accident, damages need to be higher, but how much higher? Regular people have no idea how to value injury claims but attorneys do. How do they do this?
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Damages In Personal Injury Claims
Damages can easily be defined as basically how much money is needed to compensate the personal injury victim to cover all the losses that appeared. In order to value a claim, it is important to figure out what types of damages apply to the case.
In most situations, there are 3 types of damages available. Two of them always apply while the third one is just available when egregiously negligent actions led to the incident. This is what we know as punitive damages.
Economic Damages
These are completely quantifiable financial losses or expenditures linked to the suffered injury and the accident in question. They are almost always very easy to calculate. This is especially the case when you have personal records available and medical records that can prove how much payment is needed to cover these economic damages.
Non-Economic Damages
These are the damages people refer to when mentioning pain and suffering. They are created in order to offer compensation for the psychological and emotional toll of the suffered injuries, together with long-term effects on one’s life. When looking at economic damages, negotiations are limited since it is very easy to place a strict value on them. This is not the case with pain and suffering.
When you want to determine non-economic damages, you need to combine honest assessment, experience, and research. Every person injured would like to receive a huge amount of money for any injury, but insurance companies can only afford specific amounts. This is where huge debates can appear.
Working With Injury Attorneys
Injury attorneys are capable of figuring out what a fair compensation is in a personal injury claim because of their knowledge and experience. They understand how insurance companies try to lower payments and can easily counter all the tactics they would use.
When valuing a claim, several things are considered, with the focus being put exactly on what was presented above. However, the big difference between doing things alone and filing the claim with the attorney in your corner is that you will end up receiving more. It is close to impossible to be able to quantify all your losses but for the attorney, this is something that is very easy to do.
The bottom line is you have to look for an experienced attorney as soon as possible after the accident. The sooner you do this, the higher the possibility you will be able to receive higher injury claims.