How do You Calculate Pain and Suffering?
When you’re injured in a motorcycle accident, your compensation should be based on pain and suffering and more than the sum of your calculable losses. Yep, a cumbersome sentence to say, so let’s clarify.
Every wreck will have economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages are the ones you can calculate – how much did your wrecked motorcycle cost, how much did your medical bills cost, how much did you lose out on because you couldn’t work, and so on and so forth. Non-economic damages are those that you can’t put a price tag on. Keep reading as the Car Crash Captain explains pain and suffering after a motorcycle accident.
What Does Pain and Suffering Mean?
Pain and suffering is generally used to describe what you’re going through on top of the financial impacts that are easy to see. We can quickly add up the economic losses, but there are many other losses that you are suffering from that you can’t replace with money. Those include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Loss of consortium (legalese meaning – what you feel when a loved one is killed)
- Insomnia
- Embarrassment
- Fear
- Scarring
- Pain – literally living with chronic pain the rest of your life
There are more, but you get the idea. How much is a dollar amount that can help you with the embarrassment you suffer because you’re now disfigured? And that has led to social anxiety, and being stuck indoors leads to depression, and now you can’t sleep…
A therapist can help with psychological trauma, but there’s more to it.
How is Pain and Suffering Calculated as a Dollar Amount?
There are a few different ways to calculate your losses. The insurance company is going to minimize the pain and suffering, and hope that you won’t think it’s as big of a deal as it actually is.
Even when they acknowledge the problem, they still want to use a calculation that won’t be entirely in your best interest. Your motorcycle accident lawyer will argue for one of the two methods of calculating losses.
Multiplier vs Per Diem Pain and Suffering
The multiplier method uses a static formula based on the amount of your calculable losses. Usually, this is between 1.5 and 5 times the amount. For instance, if you wreck and all of your economic losses tally up to $20,000, then the amount sought for pain and suffering might be $60,000 using a multiplier of 3. The more severe and long lasting your injuries, the higher the multiplier.
Alternatively, the per diem method calculates your pain and suffering based on how many days transpire between your motorcycle accident, and when you reach full medical recovery. The dollar amount per day rises based on the severity of the injuries. So, if you crash and two years later, you’re “back to normal” you receive 730 days of per diem for your pain and suffering.
Insurance companies will often use the per diem method based on algorithms and how long it “should” take you to recover. This way they can minimize things and say you “should” recover in one year, but then you find out it’s going to take five years… if you’ve already settled, you’re a bit out of luck.
Why You Need Herbert Law Group
Sounds complicated?
Yep, that’s why you need Herbert Law Group to help you fight against the powerful insurance companies. You’re already laid up and recovering from injuries; you don’t want to be dealing with representatives and adjusters that are basing your pain and suffering on a computer program.
Herbert Law Group has helped a lot of motorcycle accident victims. We know when you’re being served a low-ball settlement offer, and we know what would be more reasonable. We have the proof to show that pain and suffering after a motorcycle accident is something that you deserve.
Let us do the hard work for you. All we need to get things started is a phone call to 214-414-3808 (or fill out the contact form on our site and we’ll get back to you). Let’s have a free conversation, we’ll find out what happened, and develop a plan that will get you the compensation you deserve.