Injured? Follow these simple steps to estimate your possible available compensation
If you have been injured due to another party’s negligence or recklessness, you deserve compensation. But, the million-dollar question circling your mind must be:
How much compensation can I get?
This is not an easy question to answer, especially in the case of a life-altering injury that causes extensive pain and suffering as well as significant negative changes to your quality of life.
However, you can at least begin to answer the question by using the following quick method for calculating personal injury compensation.
Step 1: Total Up Your Medical Expenses
The first thing you need to do to calculate your potential personal injury damages is add up all of your out of pocket medical expenses. This includes your share of:
- Ambulance costs
- Doctors’ bills
- Hospital bills
- Drugs and medical supplies
- At-home nursing care costs
- Assistive devices such as crutches, wheelchairs, prosthetics, etc.
In additional to totaling up what you’ve already spent, don’t forget to also include an estimate of any additional expenses you will incur during your recovery. In the case of a permanent injury, you will need to estimate the cost of care for the rest of your life.
Step 2: Calculate Your Lost Wages
If your injury has left you out of work—temporarily or permanently—this should be accounted for in your compensation. Typically all you need to do to estimate your lost wages is to find a pay stub and then multiply that amount by the number of pay periods you have missed or will miss due to your injury.
Step 3: Estimate Pain and Suffering
This is where matters get a bit trickier. There is no way to pin a hard and fast dollar amount on any type of physical or emotional suffering. However, insurance companies do have ways of estimating pain and suffering. Typically what they do is take your medical expenses and then multiply them by a factor of 1 to 5 depending on how severe your injury was. The assumption here is that more severe injuries cost more to treat and deserve more pain and suffering.
Step 4: Account for Your Share of Liability If Needed
One final step you will need to complete when estimating your potential compensation for a personal injury is to consider whether you may have been named partially liable for the accident that caused your injury. For example, maybe you were in a car accident and the police report says you were 20 percent liable because although another driver struck you, you were speeding at the time of the accident. In this case you would need to reduce your estimate by 20 percent because the other driver is only liable for 80 percent of your damages.
Step 5: Contact an Attorney
While estimating your damages will give you a good baseline of how much compensation you may deserve, it does not guarantee you will get anywhere close to this amount. In order to maximize your compensation, you will need assistance from an experienced personal injury attorney such as Michael A. Kahn. Attorney Kahn can negotiate aggressively for you to receive the compensation you deserve or represent you in litigation as needed.
