Maybe you know a little about how lawsuits work. Perhaps you’ve even brought a lawsuit against an individual or company before. It’s a perfectly valid thing to do if a person or business entity harmed you, and you can prove it was their fault.
If so, you might have heard the term “pain and suffering.” It’s a legal term that comes up in lawsuits sometimes. Today, we’ll get into what this term means a little bit and how it might not mean quite the same thing whenever it comes up in lawsuits.
Different Lawsuit Damages
If you bring a lawsuit against an individual or company, you might want to get money from them for different reasons. You may want compensation for:
- Economic damages
- Non-economic damages
- Punitive damages
Economic damages mean things like medical bills, income loss, or therapy bills. Non-economic damages mean physical injuries.
If you fall in a grocery store and break your arm, you might suffer emotional distress and mental anguish. In that situation, the legal system considers the money you try to get from an individual or company to be non-economic damages.
In most lawsuits, you won’t try to seek punitive damages. Punitive damages punish an individual or entity that acted negligently or disregarded your safety.
“Pain and suffering” would be non-economic damages. What you must remember, though, is that placing a value on a person’s pain and suffering is subjective.
Economic Damage Calculation
Let’s say we use the same scenario that we just mentioned. You went into a store, and an employee was mopping an aisle. They just finished, and they didn’t bother to put a sign up.
You slipped and fell, breaking your arm. Now, you’re at home recuperating. You bring a lawsuit against the store because:
- You can’t work while you recover
- You need to recoup your medical expenses
- You have utility and food bills to pay
It’s relatively easy for a jury to figure out how much economic damage money to award you. They can look at how long it will take for your arm to heal and how much your work would have paid you during that time. They can determine how much your rent costs for that period, how much your utilities cost, and your food budget spending.
Non-Economic Damage Calculation
Before, we mentioned that the legal system considers your pain and suffering to be non-economic damage. It’s money the system feels you deserve because you’re out of action for a while, recovering.
It’s easy to quantify how much a person or business entity should give you for lost wages and doctor bills. But how do you determine how much pain and suffering is worth?
Maybe because of what happened, you’re experiencing physical pain. Doctors have to operate on your arm to repair a compound fracture. You need extensive physical therapy to get it back to what it once was.
In the meantime, you have to sit at home on the couch. Because of your arm, you can’t sleep in your favorite position. You can’t play catch with your kids in the backyard. You can’t drive your car or prepare meals.
You probably enjoyed all these things, and you can’t do them for a while. Jury members must try to put a price on all that.
Precedent and Mitigating Factors
A jury will probably look at precedent as they try to determine how much money to give you. They will look at similar cases and see what the payout was.
Your personal injury attorney will also try to argue your case depending on several factors. They’ll talk about things like injury severity, whether you have a permanent disability or not, and how long the full recovery will take you.
They will argue on your behalf, while the defendant’s lawyer will argue for the accused individual or company. They might try to say you had a preexisting medical condition or that you are partly to blame for what happened. They’re trying to get the final number knocked down somewhat.
Generally, the worse the damage and the longer the recovery period, the more money you’ll get. However, exactly how the jury comes to the final number may be a bit mysterious.
That’s because when you come right down to it, “pain and suffering” is a subjective term. You might end up getting an amount that feels right, or you might get more or less than you think is appropriate. This is one of the legal system’s idiosyncrasies.