Las Vegas Personal Injury Attorney

Evaluating Pain and Suffering

When a negligent driver causes an injury, the driver and his or her insurance company must compensate you for your pain and suffering.

Pain and suffering signifies the physical pain and emotional distress suffered by an accident victim. 

Pain and suffering damages are recoverable in addition to an accident victim’s medical costs, lost wages, and future medical damages.  Pain and suffering is characterized as “non-economic damages.”  Therefore, this includes all damages which do not constitute an actual monetary loss to the accident victim.  For instance, medical bills and lost wages constitute financial losses which can be precisely determined.  Pain and suffering refers to your other damages, and is not easy to calculate precisely.

Pain and suffering is difficult to calculate precisely, because in determining the value of pain and suffering, every aspect of an injury victim’s post-accident life must be considered.  The individual victim, and all of the suffering he or she has experienced, must be taken into account.

Because no precise formula exists to calculate pain and suffering, these damages must be either negotiated with the defendant’s insurance company or determined at trial by a jury.  If your case does not settle and goes to trial, it is the role of the jury to calculate pain and suffering.  If you are injured in an accident, it is your attorney’s duty to present your case to the jury, and convey the story of your full personal pain and emotional suffering caused by the accident.  An experienced injury attorney will present the story of your life since the accident and convey to the jury that you are entitled to be fully compensated for the pain and suffering you experienced.

Your award for pain and suffering will take into account many personal factors, such as the pain you experienced during and immediately after the accident, the suffering you experienced during medical treatment and recovery, and the subjective value of your decreased quality of life due to an inability to carry out certain activities that you enjoyed before the accident.

Factors that help determine your award for pain and suffering

As stated above, there is no precise formula for determining your award for pain and suffering.  However, several factors will help determine the amount of your award.  Experienced injury attorneys know what these factors are and can use these to your advantage in negotiating a settlement or taking your injury case to trial.  These factors are as follows:

• the overall seriousness of your injuries
• the duration of your recovery time
• the extent of any disability or lifelong injuries
• the overall impact the injuries have had on your daily life
• the emotional anguish you have suffered

In utilizing the above factors to negotiate pain and suffering damages or to present your claim for pain and suffering to a jury, your injury attorney must also be aware of the many ways in which insurance companies representing defendant drivers attempt to diminish your award for pain and suffering. 

Insurance companies will make every attempt to minimize your award for pain and suffering.  An experienced injury attorney must be aware of this in negotiating settlement or proceeding to trial.

In order to reduce your award for pain and suffering, an insurance company might attempt to argue that the defendant driver was only partially at fault (or not at fault at all) in causing the accident, and therefore, the defendant should not be liable for your pain and suffering. 

Additionally, an insurance company might attempt to argue that your pain and suffering was, in whole or in part, the result of a pre-existing injury, rather than the immediate accident. 

An experienced injury attorney is prepared for the above insurance company tactics.

If you need to speak with a personal injury lawyer, we are pleased to offer a free consultaion.  To contact our law office in Las Vegas, call 702-878-2889.