Fighting a personal injury lawsuit can be stressful, scary and confusing for just about anyone not experienced in the processes and procedures involved. It gets even worse when you’re faced with terms like, “damages and compensation formula.”
All you want is to get compensated for the accident that’s caused you harm, so you can keep your life together and recover and you’re bombarded with technical-sounding terms. This particular term, however, sounds much more threatening than it is. Learn what the damages and compensation formula is, and how it figures into the settlement you’ll receive from your personal injury claim.
Damages and Compensation Formula
Every insurer and attorney has their own means to which they value the accident you’ve suffered. The formula they use is their damages and compensation formula. This formula allows the various parties involved to place an estimate on certain specific damages as well as to determine a total value.
Some costs of an injury are objective and easy to determine: medical bills and lost wages, for example, are measurable. Other costs, on the other hand, have to be estimated. These include potential future medical bills, pain and suffering, emotional trauma, potential future income and other subjective costs.
What Is the Formula?
The first thing you need to understand is, there is no standard formula for determining what your injury is worth. Every insurer and attorney has their own formula to determine how to value these varied expenses. The reason you’ll never know what the formula used by a given entity, is that it would put them at a disadvantage in negotiations.
How It Works
When the injury claim begins, you’ll issue a demand letter with your idea of how much your injury is worth. The insurance adjuster will total up the measurable costs (again, medical bills, lost wages and the like) which are known as “special damages.” They will then figure the “general damages,” or less objective ones and apply a multiplier usually ranging from 1.5 to 5, and add the two figures together. This will be their opening offer.
The multiplier is determined by the severity of a number of factors. These include how painful the injury was, how invasive and extensive the medical treatments are, the degree of evidence involved, any potential lingering physical deformities and disabilities and the length of recovery.
How a Colorado Injury Lawyer Helps
When you’re fighting for compensation, you deserve the money you’re seeking but it can be a tough uphill battle. Insurers don’t want to pay out, and they’ll use a lot of tactics to avoid it. Having the help of a Colorado injury lawyer means having someone in your corner who has experience fighting these tactics, and who may even have some insight into the formula used by a given insurer. It’s your best bet at collecting a sizable settlement.
If this has happened to you, the experienced Southern Colorado injury attorneys at Heuser & Heuser, LLP, are here to help. Give us a call for a free, no-obligation discussion about your case, and more information about how you can seek settlement for the injuries you’ve suffered.
