Essential Tips for Maximizing Your Personal Injury Claim
Getting in an accident and getting injured as a result is serious to the point that you have to be able to explain the potential damages to the insurance company or the jury in court. Here are some essential tips that can help you explain damages and maximize your personal injury claim.
Read on to learn more.
Deposition Preparation – An Overview
When it comes to your deposition preparation, it is in your best interest to understand how the defense lawyer, the respective insurance companies, the juries, and the judges deal with assessing the potential value of your case. Damage is essentially a legal term that describes the money that you are seeking as compensation, which is part of the personal injury claim lawsuit.
At the starting point of the damages, you will find an understanding of who you were before the crash occurred. You might think of it in terms of your life breaking up before and after the injury.
Understand How Insurance Companies Evaluate Life Changes
You might want to have a look at things through the lens of what an insurance company cares about. The insurance company will care a lot about certain parts of your life as it can potentially translate into monetary damages, such as the following:
- Your health
- Your enjoyment of life
- Your ability to pursue work
- Your ability to perform household chores
- Your ability to take care of yourself
The above-mentioned things are largely the focus area, as the insurance company needs to understand what you were like before the accident and then what has changed in those specific areas after the accident.
Understand the Goal of This Civil Litigation
The greater the difference between what your life was before the accident and after, the more the missing aspects are compensated with money. This aspect perfectly illustrates why the judges say that they aren’t giving the person more than what they have lost, which is why personal injury claims aren’t like winning a lottery.
The entire goal of this civil litigation is to restore you, the victim of the crash, to what you were before the life-changing event occurred. In this case, unfortunately, the only potential remedy that the court can award you is money.
The jury or the judge cannot restore health, and they cannot get your job back to you. However, the only thing that the court can do is to award you money for the harms and losses you incurred. So, keeping this in mind, you must think about your harms and losses in these ways and have a detailed conversation with your lawyer so that you are in the best position to really explain, when you are being asked the questions, about how your life has changed as a result of the accident.
Calculate Financial Losses
When it comes to personal injury, not all damages are the same. Some of the damages are financial losses. For instance, loss of income is a loss that you can calculate. You can assess yourself from the time of the accident until the resolution of the case, do the math, and figure out what you have lost in real numbers.
There could be an argument that there can be future losses, and this calculation will be a little different. It can require the aid of experts to calculate the present value of the loss. However, you should keep in mind these economic losses, such as housekeeping costs or medical costs, that have been incurred and may be incurred in the future.
Calculate Non-Economic Losses
Now, non-financial losses are also referred to as pain and suffering awards, which essentially revolve around loss of enjoyment of life, loss of your capacity to engage in hobbies, loss of the ability to engage in recreation, and loss of your health. These are essentially non-economic losses that are not calculated by an accountant.
Often, these losses are calculated or assessed by a jury. For instance, if you have a passion for tennis, where your fingers are very important to successfully play your tennis game, and you have suffered a hand injury due to the accident, it has impaired you from playing tennis.
This example portrays a non-economic loss, which is not only about the sport but also the loss of the social aspect of playing tennis.
The Inclusion of Economic and Non-Economic Losses in Storytelling
Everything goes back to the risk that the insurance company has to endure. On that note, if you have a compelling story that can actually move the jury to want to compensate you, the victim of the accident, then it can create a greater risk to the insurance company, and the insurance company is likely to pay more money for the non-financial losses.
However, if your life hasn’t been as disrupted by the personal injury and you are able to enjoy any recreational activity as much as before, then the jury isn’t going to award as much money. So, the settlement value will reflect this as well.
Maximize Your Personal Injury Claim with the Lawyer’s Help
The best you can do to maximize your personal injury claim is with the lawyer’s help. If you have gotten in an accident in New York Albany, reach out to the Albany Personal Injury Lawyers, as they will have in-depth knowledge about the personal injury laws that are specific to the state, state regulations, and court procedures.
Having legal experts by your side can critically affect the outcome of your personal injury case. Rest assured, the personal injury lawyer will give you advice on your particular case and your types of injuries.
On the side of financial losses, your lawyer, with the help of a financial expert, will do the math and share those numbers with you. Also, your lawyer will help you get a clear picture of your financial and non-financial losses based on their vast experience of representing people with similar personal injuries as yours.
Final Thoughts
Now, you might already get the idea about the broad spectrum of the evaluation of potential damages in personal injury cases. Many factors go into assessing those damages. On that note, it is important to consult with a lawyer from your respective state who has experience and can give you expert guidance on what you can do to help maximize the value of your personal injury claim.
