How Much Are Your Injuries Worth?
Before you can determine what your personal injury claim may be worth, it’s important to find the right personal injury lawyer. Determining how much your injuries are worth after an accident are perhaps the most important part of a personal injury claim. It could also be argued that it is usually the most difficult aspect of a claim to figure out, as many factors must be looked at and considered on a case by case basis. To add a little clarity to the mystery, here are some of the facts on how an insurance company determines the worth of most personal injury claims. In order to figure out how much a claim is worth, you’ll need to know what kinds of damages you will be compensated for. After an accident, the liable party’s insurance company will generally be responsible for compensating for the following types of damages:
– Any kind of medical or medical related expenses
– Injuries resulting in physical disfigurement or permanent disabilities – Income lost as a result of missing work because of the injury
– Emotional damage – ranging from depression or stress, to strains on your
relationship with your family
– Property damage
How do insurance companies try and determine your compensation?
It’s pretty simple for insurance companies to determine how much they should compensate for medical costs, damages, or time missed from work. Basically, they just add up the money that was spent fixing things, and the money that was lost from missing out on work. However, putting a dollar figure on emotional damage or lost experiences is something different altogether. For these types of expenses, insurance companies use a formula for damages. Insurance companies start out with a base figure at the beginning of a claim. This figure is generally the total of the medical expenses related to the injury. From here, they use this amount to determine the other types of damages – be it pain, suffering, or loss of experiences. With minor injuries, an insurance claims adjuster may multiply the medical costs by 1.5-2. If the injuries are especially bad and cause a lot of pain, or discomfort, they may multiply the medical costs by up to 5. This can even be higher in especially severe cases. Then, the adjuster adds on the lost income from missing out on work. However, some insurance companies handle cases quite differently. If you are partially at fault, it can decrease your settlement. This isn’t an exact formula, but a rough estimation. For instance, if you are 10% at fault, they’ll knock 10% off of your final payout. This is more or less all there is to it, and this is how a personal injury claim may be determined. Hiring the help of FL Trial MD, a law firm with the power of law and medicine, will help you win your personal injury claim.
