How Is Compensation Calculated in Car Accident Cases?

One of the most important reasons to get a Kansas City, MO car accident attorney to help you bring your claim for personal injury is to get help in properly calculating your compensation. It’s easy to forget something key and miss out on full compensation for all your damages and losses. Keep reading for general information on how these calculations are made, and give us a call for specific help for your situation.

From a Kansas City, MO Car Accident Attorney: How Is Compensation Calculated in Car Accident Cases?

In general, you can claim compensation for two categories of losses: your economic damages and your non-economic damages.

What Are Economic Damages?

Economic damages are basically everything for which you have a receipt or a bill. In other words, these are easily quantifiable monetary amounts. Included in economic damages are usually your medical bills, any salary or wages that you have lost out on from missing work, the cost to repair or replace your property, and a number of related losses that you might not even think of.

Medical Bills

Your medical bills will include not only all the bills associated with the immediate accident itself but also any ongoing expenses, such as physical therapy or medications, and, in some cases, even your projected medical costs into the future.

Most of the time, you would wait until you’vr reached the point of what’s known as “maximum medical improvement” before bringing a claim. This term simply refers to having made as much progress as possible towards full healing; it’s the point at which doctors believe no more treatment is necessary. However, if you’ve been permanently disabled, you may have ongoing medical needs that extend into the foreseeable future.

Lost Salary or Wages

Depending on exactly what your employment situation is, you’ll gather contracts, pay stubs, bank accounts records, etc. to show what you’ve lost because of your injuries. These losses can include not just your normal salary, but also things like lost opportunities for overtime or bonuses. You will need to be able to show that you normally would’ve taken a certain amount of overtime hours and also that overtime hours were available during the time you were unable to take them because of your injury.

Destroyed or Damaged Property

In a car accident, the most obvious damaged property is usually your car. However, it’s also possible to claim for anything significant that you might’ve been carrying in the vehicle, if it was damaged, such as a mobile phone or a laptop computer.

Related Expenses

When you’ve been badly injured, there are sometimes many related expenses that you have to cover which you might not immediately think of adding to your settlement. For example, if you had to get a rideshare to get to work or to your medical appointments because your car was in the shop, this would be directly related to your accident. If you had to hire special childcare services because you were unable to fulfill your normal responsibilities in the home, you may be able to claim this, as well.

What Are Non-Economic Damages?

Non-economic damages refer to losses you have suffered which are very real, but which are much more difficult to quantify with numbers. They typically include categories like pain and suffering, mental and emotional anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium, and disfigurement. It’s very important to have a lawyer’s help to calculate these properly because they are so subjective. In most personal injury cases, you would not be able to bring any claim for non-economic damages unless you have a claim for economic damages.

Pain and Suffering

This term “pain and suffering” is talking about the actual pain and anguish that resulted from your injury. Pain and suffering is usually calculated using what’s known as the multiplier method, which we will explain below.

Mental and Emotional Anguish

This category takes into consideration the feelings that the pain and presence of an injury caused you, such as shock, humiliation, or even something like the anguish of being confined to a hospital bed for weeks and having all your movements and rhythm of life constrained.

Loss of Enjoyment of Life

This category refers to real emotional losses that you sustain when you can no longer do things that you enjoy because of your injuries. For example, if you frequently went to social events and cannot any longer, this would be a loss of enjoyment of life. If you were an avid hiker or a rock climber who can now no longer pursue your hobby, you can claim damages for this.

Loss of Consortium

Loss of consortium is usually something claimed by the spouse of an injured person, but sometimes the injured person will suffer it as well. It is essentially the loss of the love, sexual intimacy, and companionship that a spouse would normally provide when that loss can clearly be tied to an injury that was caused by another person’s negligence.

Disfigurement

When an accident disfigures a person, Missouri law allows them to seek compensation for having to deal with this for the rest of their lives. Normally, this disfigurement needs to be either the loss of a limb or a permanent and obvious scarring of the face.

Calculating Non-Economic Damages

There are two common ways to calculate non-economic damages: the multiplier method and the per diem method. The multiplier method is more common, but your lawyer can tell you the best way to calculate for your case and also make a compelling argument with the insurance company or, if necessary, with the courts for why you should be compensated for your non-economic damages in the amount that you are claiming.

The Multiplier Method

This method is usually the simplest and directly ties your non-economic damages to your economic ones. You take the full amount of your economic damages and multiply it by a number between one and five. The number you multiply your damages against should reflect the extent of your injuries. In other words, if you had mostly minor injuries that only took a few weeks to recover from, you would multiply your economic damages by a lower number like one or two.

If you had more serious injuries that kept you from working and living your normal life for months or even a year or two, you would likely use a number like three or four. If you’re suffering extremely serious injuries that have completely changed your life, such as paralysis or brain damage, you would likely multiply your economic damages by five.

The Per Diem Method

This method simply assigns a dollar amount to every day that you suffered. This method can be a little more complicated. It’s especially helpful when, for example, you are taking your case to jury trial. It allows your lawyer to present the jury with a range of daily rates. Giving the jury a range to choose from allows them to apply their sense of individual interpretation to the situation and makes it more likely they can reach a unanimous verdict. But all this needs to be done carefully, which is why it’s essential to get a lawyer’s help.

If you’ve been injured and need help in calculating your potential compensation, contact us today at the Wendt Law Firm P.C. in Kansas City, MO.