How Do You Quantify The Damages From A Car Accident?

After 2 or more cars have collided, those present at the scene can see the damages. Yet, in order to obtain a fair compensation, the victim must quantify the damages.

The defendant owes compensation to the victim. Personal Injury Lawyer in Kitchener knows that the victim deserves to be compensated for medical expenses, lost income (while recovering), and pain and suffering. Those are some of the victim’s compensatory damages.

Detailing the various compensatory damages

Past and future treatment: In order to quantify this, the injured victim must have recovered to the point of maximum medical improvement (MMI). At that point, the doctor should be able to judge what future treatments might be necessary. The bills should work to quantify the past treatments.

Lost income: For someone with a job, this is the amount of salary that was not received, because the employee was recovering from an injury. For a self-employed person, this could be determined by records in an accountant’s book, or from tax documents.

Future lost earning capacity: An expert economist can quantify this. Earning capacity gets reduced if a medical condition causes a job applicant to have spaces in his or her resume. Those that see such a resume might feel that those spaces represent times when the applicant chose not to work, because he or she did not feel like working.

Pain and suffering: This can result from development of emotional issues. That would include things like stress, anxiety, fear, depression and even loss of sleep.

A permanent disability: This can make the simplest task hard. It can introduce a challenge, when the disabled person tries to complete an everyday task, such as eating.

The approach used to quantify specific issues

An economic expert can help with quantifying the impact of the accident on the victim’s future earning capacity. An economic expert can estimate the value of the victim’s salary in the future. The economic expert cannot determine the extent to which a given medical condition might cause disruptions in the life of a recovered victim.

Some conditions get fixed by surgical means. If that takes the form of an implantation, then that implantation might need to be replaced at some point in the future. The frequency with which that might happen cannot be predicted.

The insurance companies have developed a way to quantify pain and suffering. They normally pick a number between 1.5 and 5, with 5 being a large amount of pain and suffering. A case where the accident victim experienced an extreme amount of pain and suffering might qualify for a number between 5 and 10.The selected number gets multiplied by the sum total for all the medical expenses. That is how the insurance industry quantifies pain and suffering.