What Types of Compensation Can I Recover in a Personal Injury Case?

A personal injury acquired in a car crash, slip-and-fall accident, or other circumstances can turn your life around. Medical bills may start flooding in. Time off work can leave you struggling to make ends meet. As well as physical pain, a personal injury can also cause severe mental anguish and stress. Some may be left with a permanent disability or even lose their lives in an accident.

The good news is that if someone else’s negligence caused your personal injury, you may be entitled to recover injury compensation. Fair compensation can enable you to rebuild your life, pay off your medical expenses, and make up for your lost earnings. It could even compensate you for the mental anguish caused by your accident. 

Every personal injury case is unique, but there are common types of compensation you can pursue in most cases. We will explore all the types of compensation potentially available in personal injury lawsuits. We will also discover factors that could affect how much money you may receive and how personal injury attorneys can fight for fair compensation on your behalf.

The Three Types of Personal Injury Compensation

In Georgia, there are three types of compensation personal injury victims can pursue:

1. Economic damages
2. Non-economic damages
3. Punitive damages

While you may notice that both “damages” and “compensation” are used to describe the monetary award you may receive in a Georgia personal injury case, there is a crucial difference between the two terms. Damages are awarded in a personal injury lawsuit but not all damages are compensatory. Compensation may be recovered through out-of-court negotiations, to make up for losses the claimant has suffered.

Most personal injury cases are resolved without going to court. However, if you settle out of court, you cannot receive certain damages. In wrongful death cases, you may be entitled to additional compensation.

Economic Damages

Economic damages compensate you for the financial losses you have suffered due to your accident. 

These can include:

• Medical expenses: Generally, you can count all your medical treatment, from the hospital bills incurred immediately after your accident to physical therapy to work toward your full recovery. If you sustained severe injuries or a permanent disability, you may also be able to claim for future medical costs. It is important to keep all medical bills and share them with your personal injury attorney. You can only claim for medical expenses directly related to your accident.
• Lost wages: If you had to take time off work due to your injuries, you may be entitled to compensation for lost income or lost business opportunities. If your injuries continue to affect your ability to work, you may also deserve compensation for diminished earning capacity or loss of future income.
• Property damage: If your car is wrecked in an accident, you may be able to claim the value of the vehicle or the cost of repairs back from the at-fault party.

Economic damages are more straightforward to add up as they often involve totaling your actual losses. Calculating future medical bills and lost wages, though, is more complex and may require the assistance of medical and financial expert witnesses. It is important to get this figure right as it is often used to calculate non-economic damages.

Insurance companies may pressure you to accept a lowball settlement that falls below the value of your economic losses. Don’t face that pressure alone!

Instead, hire an experienced personal injury lawyer to represent you in all communications with insurance companies. Your attorney will be aware of their tactics and can fight for fair compensation for your economic and non-economic losses.

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages compensate you for the losses that are tough to put a dollar figure on.

This includes intangibles such as:

• Physical pain and suffering
• Mental anguish and emotional distress
• Humiliation
• Reputational damage
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Loss of consortium (normal marital relationship)

Non-economic damages take into account that accident victims suffer changes to their daily lives that go beyond the inconvenience caused by their injuries. For many people, the non-economic losses are the ones they feel most acutely.

For example, you may have enjoyed an active lifestyle before your accident. You may have enjoyed playing softball with your kids, hiking, or swimming. Now, you can no longer do those activities without pain or cannot do them at all.

On a more practical level, you may find it difficult to care for your family as you did before. It may be hard to lift your young children, dress them, or stand to prepare a meal. 

Evidence of non-economic losses

Proving non-economic damages is more complex compared to financial losses, but your personal injury lawyer will seek out the evidence needed. 

Evidence may include:

• Medical records that speak to the extent of your injuries
• Testimony from medical experts, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, to explain your emotional distress and the psychological impact of your injuries
• Personal diaries that log your emotions, daily challenges, and pain levels
• Witness testimony from friends and family who observe your daily struggles

Calculating non-economic damages

There are two main methods of calculating non-economic damages: per diem and multiplier.

The per diem method attaches a dollar figure to every day your suffering lasts. For example, if the figure was $10 and your suffering lasted for 100 days, you would receive $1000 in non-economic compensation. This is typically used with less severe injuries from which you will fully recover.

The multiplier method is more common for severe injuries or those that cause permanent disability. This involves choosing a multiplier between 1.5 and 5. Your economic compensation is multiplied by the figure to give you the amount of your non-economic compensation. The greater your pain and suffering, the higher the figure.

In cases involving severe injuries or permanent disability, your Georgia personal injury attorney may hire a financial expert to calculate your injury compensation. His or her testimony could be used in court if the case goes to trial or to strengthen your case in negotiations.

Punitive Damages

Unlike compensatory damages that are designed to restore a person to his or her condition before the accident, punitive damages are designed to deter, penalize, or punish the at-fault party. Only a judge or jury can award punitive damages, so you will not receive them if you decide to settle out of court. 

These damages are rarely awarded, as under Georgia law, the court must decide that the defendant’s conduct amounted to “willful misconduct, malice, fraud, wantonness, oppression, or that entire want of care which would raise the presumption of conscious indifference to consequences.” There is a cap on punitive damages of $250,000 in some cases.

In one notable example, a Georgia jury awarded punitive damages of $1.7 billion to the family of a couple who died due to a defective car roof in a rollover accident. This was in addition to the $24 million in compensatory damages that they were previously awarded. This punitive damages award was designed to penalize the car manufacturer, who knew in advance that the roof had a problem.

Wrongful Death Damages

Wrongful death cases are brought by the families of people who have lost their lives due to a crime, defective products, or someone else’s negligence. 

Wrongful death damages are divided into two categories: losses related to the value of the life of the deceased and expenses incurred due to his or her death.

The first category includes compensation for the following:

• Lost wages and benefits
• Loss of services
• Loss of companionship, advice, counsel, and care

The second category includes:

• Medical expenses arising from the deceased’s final illness or injury
• Funeral and burial costs
• Other related expenses

Wrongful death cases can be complex, so you should make sure to seek legal advice from a qualified and experienced lawyer. An attorney can compassionately guide you through the legal process of recovering compensation in your time of loss.

How a Georgia Personal Injury Claim Works

Georgia is an at-fault state for personal injury claims. This means that the negligent party must pay compensation for any personal injuries sustained by the other party. However, we must dig deeper to understand how this works in more complex cases.

At-fault personal injury cases

Due to Georgia’s status as an at-fault state, insurance companies are very cautious about admitting fault, as doing so would mean they are financially liable for the other party’s injuries. Therefore, you should not expect the negligent party to be in a hurry to hold their hands up and admit liability. Rather, the other party’s insurance company will likely claim that at least some of the blame should be apportioned to you or other parties.

Modified comparative negligence

Under Georgia’s modified comparative negligence laws, it is possible to recover compensation even if you were partially liable for your accident. You may claim compensation if you were less than 50 percent responsible. The drawback is that the compensation you receive will be reduced in proportion to your percentage of fault.

To illustrate this, imagine you would have received $200,000 in compensation if you had not been at fault. If you were found to be 40 percent at fault, your compensation would be reduced by 40 percent to $120,000.

The four elements of a personal injury claim

Being injured in an accident is not enough to be entitled to compensation. 

To win a personal injury lawsuit, you must prove the following four points:

1. Duty of care: The negligent party owed a duty of care toward you. Possible scenarios include being the driver of a vehicle or being responsible for maintaining the premises you were at when an accident happened.
2. Breach of duty of care: By their negligent actions or inactions, the at-fault party breached their duty of care owed you.
3. Direct cause of injury: The breach of the duty of care was the direct cause of your personal injury.
4. Compensation: You indeed suffered losses and are thus entitled to monetary compensation.

To build a case that will stand up in court or negotiations with insurance companies, your Georgia personal injury attorney must provide compelling evidence to satisfy all four of these points. However, the actual amount of compensation you may receive will depend on several other factors.

Factors Affecting Compensation

How much compensation you receive will largely depend on the following three factors:

1. The seriousness of your injuries: The more severe your injuries, the more compensation you may be able to recover. Severe injuries require longer recovery times and may result in permanent disability. This means more lost wages and possibly diminished future earning capacity.
2. Insurance limits: You will only be able to recover compensation up to the insurance policy limits of the at-fault party. If your losses exceed this, you may need to sue the individual personally. However, if they have limited assets, you may not be able to recover the full amount of compensation you are owed.
3. Your level of personal liability: Under Georgia’s modified comparative liability laws, your compensation may be reduced by your own percentage of liability.

At your free consultation, an experienced Atlanta personal injury attorney can talk you through the compensation you could receive. He or she may even give you a ballpark figure based on previous cases.

Let Hoffspiegel Law Make Things Right

If financial losses after a personal injury are overwhelming you, now is the time to talk to an Atlanta personal injury lawyer at Hoffspiegel Law. Our dedicated team has a great track record of securing life-changing personal injury compensation for our clients. Will you be the next one?

It all starts with a free consultation where you can talk to our compassionate personal injury lawyers. We will carefully listen as you open up about your accident and its impact on your life. During our first conversation, we can explain whether your case is likely to succeed and the types of compensation you may recover. If we agree to take on your case, we will fight with everything we have for the best result.

The clock is ticking, so don’t delay in starting your personal injury claim. Call Hoffspiegel Law today at (404) 760-8600 or fill out our contact form.