If you are injured due to someone else’s negligence, you typically have the option to pursue a personal injury claim.
There are two elements to this:
- Economic damages cover things like medical costs and loss of earnings.
- Non-economics damages cover pain and suffering.
Calculating economic damages is relatively simple because hospitals can tell you how much treatment costs, and you know how much you normally earn. Calculating pain and suffering is more complex. Here is how it can work in Missouri:
Pain and suffering can be factored off your economic damages
One of the options is that the insurance adjuster can work out a daily rate and multiply it by the number of days they expect the issues to affect you. They can also work out the overall severity on a scale between one and five and then times it by the total economic damages awarded. Five is more serious than one.
So, a factor of 2 times economic damages of $20,000 would result in $40,000 for pain and suffering on top of the initial $20,000, giving you $60,000 in all.
How do they arrive at the numbers?
This is where your legal team will be crucial. The other party will be looking to downplay the effects of the injuries on your life. Your team needs to argue the contrary. Note that Missouri only caps non-economic damages in the case of medical malpractice.
Here are some of the things to consider:
- How much pain are you going to be in, and for how long?
- What emotional effect did the injuries cause you, and for how long?
- What things will you no longer be able to do or enjoy?
- How it will affect your relationships?
Proving these things can be challenging, so getting legal help to gather relevant evidence and present your case is crucial if you need to claim for pain and suffering after a serious injury.