When we bring a lawsuit for a personal injury case, you’re seeking damages. Once you establish the accident was caused by someone else’s negligence, someone else’s fault, you seek damages. We seek damages for pain and suffering.
There are other terms we use. We use loss of enjoyment of life. We also use lost wages. If you’ve missed work and been out of work and not paid for your job for, let’s say, one year, you’re entitled to damages that compensate you for that one year of not having a salary.
Pain and suffering from the day of the accident up until now, but also pain and suffering you’re going to have for the rest of your life. That is what you’re entitled to. You’re not just entitled to damages for the doctor visits and, God forbid, you had to have a surgery and a time in a cast and your visits to an orthopedist. You’re laying on a chiropractor’s table. You’re also entitled to damages for the rest of your life that you might only be able to treat with over-the-counter pain medication and home exercises and heating pads, things like that.
So, all of that and the rest of your life is taken into consideration when determining the extent of damages or the amount of damages you’re entitled to. That’s both in negotiating over the phone early in a case and the same holds true at a trial.
When I speak to a jury, I want that jury to know how old my client is, what my client’s life expectancy is, what they’ve been through, and what the doctors believe they’ll have to go through for the rest of their life.
A lot of times in dealing with an automobile accident and an injured party, those injuries are permanent. And permanent means they’re never going away. So, you have to consider not just what someone’s been through for a year or two, what they’re going to go through for sometimes 30 and 40 years.
When evaluating a case properly and determining what the proper amount of damages is.