If you decide you’re going to bring a personal injury case against a person or business entity, then that means you feel that they harmed you or made you ill. Hopefully, you won’t ever have to hire a lawyer and pursue such a case, but sometimes, you may have little choice in the matter. You may feel like you need to seek justice to get your life back on track.
You may pursue economic damages from the person or company that harmed you. You may also try to get non-economical ones. In some instances, maybe you’ll attempt to get both.
In every state, you need to look at the statute of limitations if you’re thinking about suing someone. That’s one thing your prospective lawyer will look into immediately. If you decide that you’ll sue someone, but you’re past the statute of limitations, there’s probably nothing you can do now from a legal standpoint.
Florida has a two-year noneconomic damages statute, but a different state might give you either more or less time. Assuming you still have time to sue this person, you might decide that you’ll try to get far more in noneconomic damages than you will in economic ones.
Such an action might seem punitive, but you may feel that the individual or company who hurt you owes it to you. If you feel they committed some truly egregious actions, and those led to your injury or illness, then you may feel a little vindictive.
That’s only natural. It’s human nature to want to hold the person or company responsible that caused your pain, suffering, and general consternation.
In this article, we’ll talk about noneconomic damages that you may try to collect. Though every civil action has different details, you will quickly notice some commonalities if you look at a few such cases and their results. Many times, the plaintiffs want compensation for similar reasons.
Loss of Consortium
Often, if you try to get economic damages from the person or company you’re suing, you can easily put a dollar amount on what they should give you. That’s because, if you have medical bills that you feel they should pay or you lost some wages while you missed work, you can add those together and present the defendant with that number.
However, if you’re going after the defendant and you’re trying to get money for noneconomic damages, that concept quickly becomes more nebulous. For instance, maybe you’re trying to get money for what the legal system calls loss of consortium.
This term basically means you’re looking for recompense because once you could do something, and now you can’t do it anymore. You’re alleging that you can’t do this thing or these things because of the defendant’s action or inaction.
For example, if you can’t enjoy physical intimacy with your spouse or partner anymore, maybe you feel that’s because the company you’re suing made a product that hurt you.
If you can tie those two concepts directly together, you should find the jury sympathetic. They can easily picture themselves in your shoes, so they will probably award you damages if the case ever gets to a jury’s verdict.
If the company’s product hurt you so badly that you can never do the thing again that you once could, then you should logically expect a lot more money from the defendant. If you can also prove that they knew about the product’s design flaws and they let it get onto store shelves anyway, then you should expect more money via settlement or a jury’s verdict.
Disfigurement
Maybe you will try to get noneconomic damages from someone if their action or inaction burned you very severely or caused some other kind of immediately noticeable physical condition. If so, the jury should understand that motivation as well.
Perhaps you had a modeling career, and now, you can’t do that anymore. Perhaps you can’t find anyone who is willing to date you because you don’t look as attractive as you once did.
That kind of thing will certainly warrant financial compensation from the person who you allege caused you to look the way you do now.
Loss of Enjoyment of Life
Maybe, because of something a person or company did, you don’t enjoy your life in the same way that you once did. The injury or illness that this individual or business entity caused makes you feel anxious or depressed all the time.
If you can show the jury that you have a hard time just dragging yourself out of bed anymore, you can expect to get a generous payday. You might have some family members testify that you once had a bubbly, happy personality, but that has gone away now.
Pain and Suffering
The term “pain and suffering” comes into play a lot when you’re trying to get money in a civil trial. It means what a person or company put you through. If their action or inaction made you feel pain from an injury or discomfort from an illness, you might feel that they should give you cash for those unpleasant feelings that they inflicted.
Much like loss of consortium or any other noneconomic damages, you can probably establish that the defendant caused your condition if you can provide abundant proof.
However, the jury must still figure out how much money they should give you that they feel matches what you endured.
You can probably cite precedent when determining how much you want. Your lawyer can help you in this area as well.
They probably know about situations like yours. They can look up the settlement amounts if they haven’t had direct experience with a case exactly like yours before.
While you may have a hard time coming up with a particular number in damages you think you should get, hopefully, the amount makes you feel like you got justice. Sometimes, you want that feeling just as much or more than the money.