Hi, my name is Matt Eason. This video will discuss recoverable damages in a car accident or personal injury case. I’ve been practicing personal injury law here in Sacramento for over 25 years.
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It’s not uncommon for us to receive an inquiry through the internet asking questions such as, “How do I get the most from a car accident? How do I maximize what I should receive?” While those are fair questions, the better question, the better way to look at it, is what you are entitled to under the law to ensure you are adequately compensated for your loss.
From a vast picture, when you’re involved in a car accident, you can recover all the damages for how your life has changed. But how do you categorize, classify, or explain that to the judge or jury? The primary way we do it is to break things down into two categories: economic and non-economic.
Economic damages were historically relatively straightforward. They’re the type of damages that an accountant could put a pencil to. For example, how much have your past medical expenses been? How much are your future medical expenses? Wage loss in the past and wage loss in the future. Things like that. While it may seem simple to calculate, the facts giving rise may be very complex. Was your loss of work related to this accident or related to something else? Is your loss of work in the future? Is it going to be short-term, long-term, or mid-term? Is it speculative? It’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen. Those are all the kinds of questions we can help you with. Theoretically, with economic damages, you’re entitled to all of your loss of earnings from the past and future and all your medical expenses from the past and future.
Depending on the amount of economic damages that might be in play, sometimes it’s essential to hire expert witnesses. It’s common for us to bring a doctor or a hospital staff member to help us categorize and explain the cost of future medical care. Likewise, getting a vocational rehabilitation person who might look at your work history is not uncommon. Could you help us explain to a judge, jury, and claims adjuster how much income you’ll lose and how you can replace what will not be replaced? That income So, while it seems simple to say that your loss of income is this, or your medical bills are that; we often have to rely on qualified experts to help us prove that.
The second category of damages we talk about is, quite frankly, the art of the practice of law, and it’s trying to come up with the number and value for the non-economic damages. There is no formula for determining pain and suffering. There is no fixed standard. There’s no reference book. Everybody’s threshold for pain is different. Everybody’s pain is different. It’s left to the wisdom of the judge and jury to determine what they believe is reasonable. As lawyers, our job is to help paint the picture accurately and entirely to the judge and jury so they have an understanding and empathy for what you’ve gone through may have to go through.
There was a point in time 20 to 30 years ago in which we used to have a formula based on the medical bills as to what your theoretical pain and suffering was. It was often three times to five times your medical bills. The problem with that formula in the current era is that medical bills vary. You can have one trip to the hospital, charge one person $20,000, and for the same trip, charge a different person $3000 based on their insurance coverage or lack thereof. Therefore, assuming that their case, personal injury value, or pain and suffering value is worth a multiplier of each number is wrong.
In addition to the disparate issues over medical bills, not all pain is the same, or disfigurements are the same. You could have a young person with a scar on her face and say she only had $500 in medical bills. Therefore, she should get three or four times that back in pain and suffering, and disfigurement would be completely unjust. Likewise, you can have a salty old farmer who’s got wrinkled skin from being in the sun nonstop for years and years and have the same scar in the same place. He’s not entitled to the same amount of damages as the younger person who didn’t have that type of prior skin condition. So, when looking at the value and suffering, you must look at the people involved, not just the money spent or the medical bills.
Having handled thousands of cases over the last 25 years, our office understands precisely what someone’s case is worth and what a hypothetical judge or jury thinks its value is. That helps us ensure we get that money or, hopefully, even better from the insurance companies responsible.
If you’re wondering what the value of your car accident case is, you should be because you need to be down this road hundreds of thousands of times to determine the value. If you’ve been involved in a car accident or otherwise have a negligence claim against somebody, you want to know the value and maybe want to get some help. I hope you’ll be able to reach out to me. My name is Matt Eason, and I am a Sacramento car accident attorney. I’m with the law firm of Eason & Tambornini.
