If the victim of an automobile accident were to decide to file a lawsuit, that act would give the court permission to issue an order to the at-fault driver. That order should call for the payment of any damages that were caused by the collision of the involved vehicles.
Types of Compensatory Damages
Special damages: That includes the cost of past and future medical treatment, lost income and future lost income. Any lawyer retained by the suing victim might need to pay an expert witness, if the same plaintiff/victim hopes to get money for future lost income.
General damages: Pain and suffering, such as emotional suffering and actual pain; cost of any needed surgeries; sleeplessness and psychological problems.
Vehicle damage is included on the list of compensatory damages.
Questions considered by jury, when it must decide on the monetary value of a given damage.
What was the monetary total for all of the plaintiff’s medical bills? That should be easy to calculate.
What is the cost of any future care? The jury might not know what care might be needed, unless the plaintiff’s attorney had arranged for presentation of testimony from a medical expert. That presentation might need to be combined with testimony from an expert in economics, someone that could estimate the costs of that specific care in the future.
How much income did the plaintiff lose? If the plaintiff had held a job, then the plaintiff’s salary at that time of the accident would offer some indication of how much income was lost. Juries that must consider that question for self-employed plaintiffs would have reason to desire information on what the plaintiff’s earnings were at the time of the accident.
Will the income affect the plaintiff’s ability to make a living? A good Personal Injury Lawyer in Richmond Hill should showcase the ways that the accident-caused injury might decrease the plaintiff’s ability to earn a living. For instance, if the treatment required surgery, that could mean other surgeries in the future. Each surgery would mean an interruption of the employee’s work schedule.
Ideally, such an interruption could be taken care with short-term disability insurance. However, if that were not the case, then the need for an operation might force the employee to face a termination of employment. That could create an unwanted “hole” on the resume of the unhappy job seeker. The presence of such a “hole” would make it harder to find a job.
Is the plaintiff disabled or disfigured? Someone with a disability often struggles to find a job. That fact would shine more light on the fact that the accident-caused injury had the potential to alter the plaintiff’s ability to earn a living in the future. Even a self-employed person with a disability might need to pay for special equipment.