If you were injured in a car accident, a truck accident, a motorcycle accident, or another type of accident caused by someone else, you can file a personal injury lawsuit against them. You can use your case to try and collect compensation to cover medical bills and other expenses.
Ensure you understand which types of personal injury case compensation you may be eligible to collect before taking legal action. Learn more about them below.
Economic Damages
Economic damages, also known as compensatory damages, are the type of damages you can easily calculate in the aftermath of an accident.
Medical expenses are an excellent example of economic damages. You can pull out the receipts for the medical treatment you’ve received following an accident to see just how much these expenses have cost you.
Other great examples of economic damages include:
- Lost wages
- Property damage repairs
- Loss of earning capacity
When you’re first considering how much personal injury case compensation you could potentially collect by filing a lawsuit, calculate the economic damages. This should provide a much better idea as to how much your case is worth.
Non-Economic Damages
While economic damages are easy to calculate, non-economic damages are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Calculating non-economic damages isn’t so simple because they don’t have specific costs associated with them.
Pain and suffering is one of the prominent examples of non-economic damages. Even though there isn’t a quantifiable value attached to pain and suffering, you can still attempt to recover these damages when you file a personal injury claim.
Other good examples of non-economic damages are:
- Mental or emotional distress
- Physical disfigurement
- Loss of enjoyment of life
If you plan to pursue this form of personal injury case compensation, be sure to work with an experienced personal injury lawyer. They can draw on their experience to try convincing a judge or jury to award you with non-economic damages. They can also help justify the amount of compensation you’re looking to collect.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages, also known as exemplary damages, don’t apply to every personal injury case. To recover punitive damages, you and your personal injury attorney must prove that the defendant in your case demonstrated gross negligence during an accident.
Punitive damages aren’t just designed to provide the personal injury case compensation you need to recover from an accident. They’re also put in place to further punish the defendant in a personal injury lawsuit for the reckless behavior they exhibited that led to your accident occurring in the first place.
Here are several instances in which punitive damages might come into play:
- A drunk driver with a BAC twice the legal limit caused you to sustain catastrophic injuries in a car crash.
- A surgeon made a major mistake when operating on you while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
- A diet pill company sold you supplements that negatively interacted with your prescription medications without warning.
Punitive damages are rare compared to economic and non-economic damages. However, you may still want to try to recover these damages if your personal injury case stems from an extreme accident case.
Contact Us To Begin Working on Collecting Personal Injury Case Compensation
Filing a personal injury case can help you secure the compensation you need to move forward with your life. Hire the right lawyer to provide legal representation, and they can improve your chances of collecting personal injury case compensation.
McLaurin Law, PLLC, can set you up with the compassionate, detail-oriented personal injury services you need. Give us a call at 713-461-6500 to schedule a consultation.
