One of the most difficult and controversial parts of any auto accident settlement is trying to figure out the pain and suffering damages awarded to someone in an auto accident. In fact, one of the main reasons that many cases go to court instead of reaching a settlement is because of a disagreement over the pain and While there are some “formulas” that you can use to try to estimate the value of your pain and suffering, they don’t hold in all cases and each case depends on many different factors. If you have a major disagreement with an insurance company over pain and suffering, sometimes the best route will be to enlist the services of an attorney to have him work on your behalf.

In auto accident settlements, there are two types of damages awarded, special damages and general damages. Special damages are the types of damages that can be easily quantified, like hospital bills and damages to your car. General damages other damages such as pain and suffering. In many cases the special damages are used to calculate the general damages. Usually this is done by multiplying the medical bills by two, three, or four times depending on the location of the lawsuit. However, there are no laws on the books that govern this. More than anything else, the type of jury that you can expect to get will govern the pain and suffering settlement that you can expect to get.

While multiplying your medical bills by a certain number gives you a good starting point for calculating pain and suffering, it doesn’t hold in all cases. There can be many cases where the medical costs of fixing an injury are not very big, but the pain and suffering involved may be significant. One example of this is visible scarring on young children – especially young girls. There are also other cases where there may be large hospital bills, like if someone has a battery of tests done after a car accident, but significant injuries haven’t been sustained that impact their work or life. The inability to tell if someone is actually suffering is why most settlements that are going to break down over pain and suffering do so.

Pain and suffering also doesn’t just depend on what injuries were sustained, there are other factors surrounding the accident that usually can come into play as well. If an accident looked particularly bad you can expect higher damages. You can also expect to collect more damages if the other driver was drinking or otherwise grossly incompetent.

However, the biggest determinant of what size of award you can expect to get for pain and suffering is the type of jury that you can expect to have in your area. Some areas have juries that will award large sums of money some areas are less forgiving to accident victims. A great source of information on this is finding what amount has been awarded to cases similar to yours in the past in your area. It also provides a great starting point for settlement negotiations.

To get the most out of your car accident pain and suffering settlement you need to establish that the injuries you sustained from the car accident, not the car accident itself, severely affected your life in some way. Don’t forget that there’s also other general damages that you can apply for other than pain and suffering. You can claim loss of earning capacity, loss of quality of life, and even loss of consortium and collect damages in court or through the settlement process.

Pain and suffering damages in a car accident are some of the most complex and difficult legal matters that surround auto accidents. If you only have a small amount of damages that you can collect on, you might be better negotiating with the insurance company yourself. However, if you have a substantial amount of pain and suffering money at stake, hiring a negligence attorney would probably pay for itself because there are no hard and fast rules and the issue deals with so many different factors that someone not experienced in law may not be able to accurately assess the total damages.

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Filed under: Determining Compensation • Negotiating a Settlement

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