Personal injury lawsuits provide a path to recover compensation after an unexpected accident, but it can be challenging to know what you are entitled to receive. Experienced Kansas City injury lawyers explain the two distinct categories of compensation: economic damages that cover your measurable financial losses and non-economic damages that address the intangible ways your life has changed.
What Are Economic Damages?
Economic damages involve the concrete financial losses you can calculate with receipts, bills, and documentation. These damages include all of your past and future medical expenses, from emergency room visits to ongoing rehabilitation. You can recover compensation for lost wages when your injuries prevent you from working, plus future earnings you might miss due to permanent disabilities or reduced earning capacity. Your claim will also pay to repair or replace any property damaged in the accident.
Courts evaluate economic damages by adding up your actual expenses and projecting future costs based on medical expert testimony and economic analysis. Your injury attorney will work with experts to help calculate your losses, such as healthcare providers who can estimate ongoing treatment needs and economic analysts who can assess how your injuries affect your ability to earn income throughout your career.
What Are Non-Economic Damages?
Non-economic damages compensate you for losses that cannot be quantified but profoundly impact your quality of life. These include physical pain, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment in activities you once loved, and the strain on your relationships with family members.
Calculating non-economic damages requires more subjective methods. Two approaches are typically used:
- The per diem method assigns a daily dollar amount to your suffering and multiplies it by the days you will experience this pain.
- The multiplier method takes your economic damages and multiplies them by a factor (usually between 1.5 and 5) based on the severity of your injuries and their long-term impact on your life.
How to Prove Economic and Non-Economic Damages
Proving your damages requires comprehensive evidence. For economic damages, medical records, bills, employment records, tax returns, and expert testimony about future costs and lost earning capacity can help establish your right to compensation. However, non-economic damages require a different approach.
For example, your attorney might present testimony from family members about how injuries changed your personality or relationships, photographs showing your active lifestyle before the accident, and psychological evaluations documenting emotional trauma. Medical experts can also explain how your injuries cause ongoing pain and limit your daily activities.
Trust a Personal Injury Lawyer to Fight for Your Fair Compensation
When someone else’s negligence turns your world upside down, you deserve fair compensation for all of your economic and non-economic damages. Unfortunately, insurance providers and defense attorneys work tirelessly to minimize the at-fault party’s financial liability. A Kansas City personal injury attorney fights these tactics by building compelling cases that demonstrate the full scope of your damages.
Your knowledgeable accident lawyer in Kansas City will investigate your accident thoroughly, gather essential evidence, consult with medical and economic experts, and negotiate aggressively with the at-fault party’s representatives. When needed, they will take your case to trial to secure the compensation you truly deserve. To begin building your case strategy, contact a personal injury attorney today for a free, confidential consultation.