If you are injured in a car accident or other accident caused by someone else’s negligence, your life may be impacted in various ways. In addition to losses with a direct economic impact, such as medical bills and lost wages, your quality of life may deteriorate.
Understanding this concept is key to seeking fair compensation in your personal injury case.
Damages in Personal Injury Cases
Courts are limited in the type of relief they can provide in personal injury cases. They can’t undo the harm that someone caused you, but they can do their best to make things better by awarding financial damages to return you as close to the position that you were in before someone else’s negligence injured you.
Types of Damages
There are two primary types of damages awarded in Texas personal injury cases:
Economic Damages
Economic damages are defined by Texas law as “compensatory damages intended to compensate a claimant for actual economic or pecuniary loss.”
Common examples of economic damages awarded in personal injury cases include:
- Medical bills
- Ongoing medical treatment
- Future medical expenses
- Lost wages
- Reduced earning capacity
- Costs to repair or replace damaged personal property
Receipts, invoices, and bills can help establish the value of economic damages.
Non-Economic Damages
In contrast, non-economic damages are “damages awarded for the purpose of compensating a claimant for” the following:
- Physical pain and suffering
- Mental or emotional pain or anguish
- Loss of consortium
- Disfigurement
- Physical impairment
- Loss of companionship and society
- Inconvenience
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Injury to reputation
- All other nonpecuniary losses of any kind other than exemplary damages
Exemplary damages are sometimes awarded to punish a defendant, but they are reserved for rare cases in which the defendant’s actions are particularly egregious.
What Is Quality of Life?
The term “quality of life” relates to damages for loss of enjoyment of life. Personal injuries can cause serious injuries that interfere with your ability to enjoy life and reduce your overall quality of life. Specifically, you may not be able to enjoy your favorite hobbies.
How Do You Value Quality of Life?
Determining a fair value is one of the most complicated aspects of quality-of-life damages. Texas law says claimants are entitled to “damages deemed just and fair by a jury of their peers.” What is considered just and fair will depend on the unique circumstances and what the jury determines would be fair under them.
Potential factors the jury might consider when determining your quality of life and the reduction of it could include:
- Your age
- Your educational background
- Your work history
- The severity of your injuries
- How the injury has affected your ability to work
- How the injury has affected your day-to-day life
- How long the injury is expected to last
- How the injury is likely to affect you in the future
- The nature of the defendant’s actions
- The child’s relationship with each child
- Any history of domestic violence within the family
- Whether the injury changed your appearance
An experienced attorney can explain the average settlement available for your type of claim, evaluate your situation, and gather evidence to maximize your claim’s value.
An experienced attorney can help you with your child custody case, emphasizing the factors that point to your suggested child custody arrangement.
Evidence to Establish Quality of Life
Even though loss of enjoyment of life damages are challenging to quantify, it is still your responsibility as the plaintiff in a personal injury case to prove your loss of quality of life damages. In a civil case, the burden of proof is by the preponderance of the evidence, meaning that the evidence more likely than not proves one of the necessary elements of the claim.
Evidence that can help establish your losses could include:
- Your medical records
- Testimony from your spouse, children, family members, friends, and coworkers
- Daily pain journal entries
- Testimony from expert witnesses about the general
- Photos and videos of you enjoying your previous life
- Financial records, demonstrating the costs of your injuries and how they have caused additional stress on your life
An experienced attorney can identify, preserve, and gather evidence to establish your claim.
Contact the Dallas Personal Injury Attorneys at Benton Accident & Injury Lawyers for Help Today
If you were injured due to someone else’s negligence, you should be fairly compensated for the full extent of losses you have suffered. Your life may have drastically changed after the accident, and the compensation you seek should reflect this reality.
An experienced Dallas personal injury lawyer from Benton Accident & Injury Lawyers can review your situation and explain the damages you may be able to seek. Contact us today for a free consultation.
Visit Our Personal Injury Law Firm in Dallas, TX
Benton Accident & Injury Lawyers
1825 Market Center Blvd # 350, Dallas, TX 75207
(214) 556-8321
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