Suffering Damages – What You Need to Know
Pain and suffering damages are damages in a personal injury lawsuit that are designed to offer compensation to victims for their suffering. The value of these damages will depend on the extent of an individual’s injuries, their lifestyle before and after the accident, and the impact the accident will have had on the person’s life. While individuals will generally receive more money for more serious injuries; there are cases where victims could receive high-value pain and suffer damages for less serious injuries. For example, a torn ACL will mean less to a person who works an office job than to an elite athlete whose income is dependent on his or her ability to perform. Your personal injury lawyer will consider your job, your lifestyle, and your injuries when determining pain and suffering damages.
These damages are calculated using a special formula that takes the costs of your medical expenses; multiplies them by another number known as a multiplier. While the formula is important to determine the value of your claim, the value of the multiplier is subjective and dependent on whether your lawyer can defend that your claim warrants higher value damages. If you have been injured and are considering seeking pain and suffering damages, here are a few things you should keep in mind.
Pain and suffering damages are subjective. But they should be taken no less seriously than other kinds of damages in a personal injury claim. What makes pain and suffering damages particularly difficult is the necessarily subjective nature of pain; and the reality that the medical profession sometimes doesn’t take patient claims about pain seriously enough. One woman wrote in the Sacramento Bee about how doctors released her from the hospital, despite her serious headache. She later learned that she was going through a stroke. Women, in particular, are more likely to not have their pain taken seriously by doctors. This can lead to inadequate pain treatment, inadequate diagnosis of pain, and inadequate pain and suffering damages later.
Buzz Feed recently reported on 29 cases where women’s pain wasn’t taken seriously, with tragic and unfortunate outcomes. One woman was told that her swollen knee probably wasn’t a serious injury. She later learned, months later, that she had torn her ACL. One woman who suffered a cracked eye socket never received proper diagnostic testing at the hospital. It was only months later that she learned about the seriousness of her injuries and that she could have lost her eyesight. Another woman reported only being taken seriously when she was diagnosed with sepsis, a potentially deadly infection.
What should we take away from these stories? First, it is important to get a proper diagnosis for your injuries, for your safety and well-being. Secondly, it is important to let your personal injury lawyer know what your injuries were, what the treatment was, and how the injury has interfered with your life. Your lawyer’s job is to put together a case to help you receive the maximum possible pain and suffering recovery possible under the law.
