What Compensation Can Be Recovered After a Car Wreck?

From a North Carolina Car Accident Attorney: Compensation You Can Recover After a Car Accident

Your Economic Losses

The first type of compensation you can request is reimbursement for all your economic losses. This would include all your medical bills first and foremost. You should get compensation not only for treatment that you had at the scene or immediately after the accident, but also for any medications, follow up treatments or surgeries, and physical therapy. Your economic losses might also include property that was damaged in the accident, most notably your vehicle.

Your economic losses will also include anything that you lost in terms of income. You should receive compensation for your lost wages if you had to miss work due to an injury, and your compensation here should take into account the full value of your income. For example, if you were working towards an end of your bonus and have now become ineligible, so long as you can show that you were on track to get the bonus, you may be able to claim for this loss, as well.

Your Non-Economic Losses

Non-economic classes are those intangibles that are often referred to as “pain-and-suffering.” This would include not just compensation for your pain, but also for your mental anguish and distress and any loss of enjoyment in life that you’ve experienced. These can be tricky to calculate, and it’s important to work with a lawyer who can help you claim for everything you are owed here and show you how to prove the true level of your suffering.

Because it’s not possible to put a dollar amount on something like pain, these damages are typically calculated by multiplying the total of your economic damages by a number between one and five, depending on how serious your injuries were. If your injuries were minor and healed quickly, you would multiply by one. If you had catastrophic injuries that required multiple surgeries and which have altered your life forever, you would likely multiply by five. Everything else comes somewhere in between.

Punitive Damages

Punitive damages are quite rare, and your lawyer is the only one who will be able to tell you whether it’s appropriate for you to ask for them. These damages don’t compensate you for anything. They just punish the responsible party to send a message, both of them and to society in general. They are usually only applied when someone was being recklessly negligent or if they hurt you on purpose.

For help in fully calculating what you are owed after a car accident, contact David and Associates Injury Attorneys in Wilmington, Whiteville, Clinton, Supply, Jacksonville, or Wallace, NC. 

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