Personal injury law does big business yearly. That’s why you see lawyers who get into this area and operate exclusively there. They know that if they practice this legal niche, they will likely get virtually limitless customers. That’s because various personal injury cases appear before courts every day all across the country.
In personal injury law, you have what the legal system calls economic and non-economic damages. You might have a lawsuit where the plaintiff goes after the defendant for one, the other, or both.
Determining the value of pain and suffering presents challenges for the legal system, but it’s something worth talking about if you plan on bringing a personal injury lawsuit against a person or entity. We’ll discuss how economic and non-economic damages differ in personal injury cases right now.
Table of Contents
What Constitutes Economic Damage in a Personal Injury Case?
First, let’s talk about economic damages in a personal injury lawsuit. You might sue someone for many reasons. Maybe you allege that a doctor harmed you, and you’re suing them for medical malpractice. Perhaps they operated on the wrong body part, gave you the wrong medication, or did something else that means they didn’t meet the standard of care that the medical profession expects.
Maybe you’re suing someone who hit your car with their vehicle and injured you. Perhaps you’re suing a store if you slipped and fell while shopping. Dog bite lawsuits fall into the personal injury realm. You can probably think of many more examples of reasons to sue someone.
No matter why you bring a civil action against a person or entity, if you can calculate how much money they cost you and you attempt to recoup those expenses, you can consider that an economic loss, or economic damages, in legal parlance. Basically, you can figure out how much in damages to ask of the person or entity that hurt you by adding up the money you spent repairing the harm they did.
If you missed work because someone’s actions injured you, you can sue them for your lost wages. If you have doctor bills piling up after someone harmed you, you can sue the responsible party for the cost of those as well. In this way, you can easily see how economic damages work. They’re tangible monetary losses you sustained that you feel another person or business entity directly caused.
What About Non-Economic Damages?
As for non-economic damages, you can’t usually quantify those as easily as you can the economic ones. Many damages might potentially fall into the non-economic category. For instance, maybe you have a situation where a product harmed you. That’s a product liability lawsuit, one of the many branches of personal injury law.
In such a situation, if you went to the doctor and they charged you a certain amount to make you well again, that’s an economic loss. What about the pain and suffering you went through, though? If a product made you ill, and you spent days or weeks recovering, should you not receive compensation for that experience?
That is a non-economic loss, and you can sue the person or entity who harmed you for that reason. Perhaps you can’t do the work you once could after a person or entity hurt you or made you sick. Maybe they harmed you so badly that you must quit your job and leave your profession entirely.
Such situations do happen. When they do, you’ll presumably look to recoup an amount equal to what you would have made if you had continued to do your job for the rest of your adult life. You and your lawyer can make your best guess as to what you would have earned had you continued to do your job, and you can demand that amount of money from the defendant.
You might demand financial compensation if you can’t play with your kids the same way you once could after an illness or injury that someone else caused. Maybe you can’t enjoy physical intimacy with your spouse or partner anymore. These all fall into the non-economic damages category. Such situations disrupt your life, either temporarily or permanently. That’s what you’re trying to rectify.
How Can You Know How Much Money You Might Get in One of These Cases?
It’s tough to say how much money you might get with each of these personal injury lawsuits. Often, you can look toward precedent from similar legal cases.
Presumably, you won’t know the details of those cases, but your lawyer will. They can give you a ballpark estimate of what you might expect from the defendant if they lose the court case. The defendant might also offer you a settlement rather than relying on a jury’s decision.
If you’re only suing for economic damages, that’s easier in some respects. You don’t have to try to figure out an arbitrary amount that you feel makes sense for losing abilities or parts of your life you can no longer enjoy. You can simply add up the doctor bills or missed paychecks instead.
When you begin to involve non-economic damages, you have to try to assign a calculable amount of money to things that defy an obvious price tag. How much should you get from the defendant if you can’t do some of the things you once enjoyed? Is that worth thousands of dollars or perhaps even millions?
You should probably follow your lawyer’s advice when trying to determine the dollar amount you’ll ask from the defendant in one of these cases. Your attorney, assuming they know this legal niche well, can give you a number and explain the reasoning behind it. If you agree with them, you can proceed.
You can always try to get more out of a defendant instead. You can sue them for any amount you want. Just know that the jury will look at precedent and determine what seems reasonable if the case eventually goes to a verdict.
