Personal Injury Lawyer
Before you file a personal injury lawsuit, you should have a good understanding of the types of compensation. The law is designed to make anyone who was injured as a result of someone else’s actions whole again. Essentially, you have the right to be returned to your monetary state before the accident. There are three types of compensation you can receive, which are called damages.
The Types of Damages
- Special compensatory damages – This is the most basic type of compensation. It covers everything that has an objective monetary value. So, your medical bills fall into this category because they have an exact, unquestionable value. The value of a $500 medical bill is $500 and no more or less. Medical bills, property damage, lost wages, and other injury-related purchases all fall into this category.
- General compensatory damages – This category covers everything that does not have a monetary value. The most common general compensatory damage is “pain and suffering.” There is not an objective monetary value for the amount of pain you had to endure as a result of the injury. Instead, the judge will place a monetary value on it. It may be determined that your suffering is worth $1,000, for example. This category includes physical pain, emotional pain, trauma, and loss of ability.
- Punitive damages – The final category is not really a form of compensation at all. Punitive damages are awarded strictly to punish the responsible party, rather than to reward the victim. In most cases, punitive damages are only applied when the at-fault party was either acting maliciously or especially irresponsibly. This means if someone intentionally created an unsafe working environment, they might be punished by the judge with a $250 fine. Or if someone was driving drunk, the judge may assign $750 punitive damages in the hopes that they will never drive drunk again.
All damages that the victim of an injury is entitled to falls into one of these three categories. With these three categories together, you should be able to be completely compensated for your losses, no matter what your suffering entailed. In order to receive all the compensation that you are owed, you should always hire a personal injury lawyer as your first step. They have specialized in this area of the law in order to know everything that a victim can claim in a lawsuit. With help from your legal representation, you should be able to be returned to how you were before the accident.
Source: Personal Injury Lawyer Miami, FL, Needle & Ellenberg, P.A.