What Will I Recover In A Personal Injury Case?

Transcript

Hi, I’m Mike Hancock with Hancock Injury Attorneys and today we’re going to discuss what you’re legally entitled to recover in a personal injury case. The goal in any personal injury case is to make our clients whole, and what that means is to be able to put you back in the same condition you were in prior to your accident.

The system of personal injury claims is built around the idea of making our clients whole. The only way that our judicial system has to do that in a personal injury case is by having the wrongdoer, the defendant or the insurance company, pay you damages. Those damages are typically referred to as either compensatory damages or punitive damages.

Compensatory damages are just to compensate you for your losses. The easiest way to describe compensatory damages is as those damages that would include things like paying to have your car fixed, paying to total your car, paying to put you into a rental car while your car’s being fixed, making sure that all of the medical bills that you have as a result of your injury due to an accident are paid for by the wrongdoer, not only past medical bills but we also compensate and calculate what your future medical bills will be. In addition to medical bills both past and future we look to make sure you’re compensated for lost wages. We use the terminology past lost wages but when we’re talking about future lost wages we talk about loss of earning capacity. And in addition to medical bills and lost wages and money to pay you for your vehicle, we are also looking to make sure that you compensated for your pain and suffering.

Now pain and suffering is a general term thrown around, but you’re entitled to money for the physical pain that you incur as a result of an accident or an injury and the mental suffering that can occur long after the physical pain resolves. You’re entitled to be compensated for inconvenience, for loss of enjoyment of life, for disability, for disfigurement and scarring, and those are just some of the elements of pain and suffering. And we also want to make sure that we are going to get you compensated for all of those types of medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, both past and in the future.

If you have any questions regarding what types of damages you’re entitled to in your personal injury claim, please give me a call Mike Hancock with Hancock injury attorneys at 813-534-6929 or contact us through our website at hancockinjuryattorneys.com.