Pain and Suffering Compensation: What You Need to Know
Pain and suffering compensation is very complicated. How much money you can sue for pain and suffering? The truth is that there is no magic number. There are ways to try to calculate the amount you can sue for, but frankly, you may need an attorney to do an analysis.
What Pain and Suffering Includes
Pain and suffering tends to be difficult to define. It is simply any physical or mental distress that you seek damages after suffering. These are generally a part of noneconomic or general damages. Since these are difficult to assign monetary values to, you need to work with an experienced attorney who
understands the values normally assigned to cases like yours. Pain and suffering is subjective and may include:
Intangible losses
Loss of reputation
Loss of companionship
Mental anguish
Loss of enjoyment of life
Pain and suffering can include many different things. The complexities behind the claim make it difficult to handle alone.
How to Calculate Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering is difficult to calculate. While it might be easy to figure out how much you are owed in property damage or medical bills, it is hard to put a number on how much pain and suffering a victim goes through. Lawyers tend to have a system that allows them to figure out how much you should sue for pain and suffering. There are many factors in pain and suffering:
Injury severity
Location of scarring
Ongoing consequences
Socioeconomic or political factors
Recovery time
State caps on damages
Keep in mind that states have caps on damages. For instance, there may be a 250,000-dollar cap on pain and suffering claims. It’s important to ask your attorney what’s reasonable and what the caps are.
What to Do About Pain and Suffering
If you think that you were hurt through negligence and that you deserve pain and suffering damages, then you need to take steps to make it happen. Your first step should be to contact a lawyer. Make sure that you have your evidence ready and bring it to an attorney to have your case analyzed. This is the best step you can take before you bring it to court or file a suit against the negligent party.
With pain and suffering, until you analyze your case, you aren’t going to know how much money you can sue for. This is why it’s crucial to have an attorney that understands your case and can go over what type of limits you have or how much you can demand.