Pain And Suffering: The Unique Personal Injury Category

When you get injured in a car wreck, there will be pain, and you will likely suffer. While that might be a given, it can present some accident victims with a puzzle: how do you get reimbursed for this expense if the accident was not your fault? Read on to learn more.

What is meant by pain and suffering?

If the definition is not that obvious, pain and suffering consists of every negative effect that the accident has on your mental health and general level of discomfort. When you can no longer enjoy your usual daily activities because of your injuries, that's pain and suffering. When you are miserable, bored and in discomfort during your hospital stay, that's pain and suffering. There are two ways to evaluate your pain and suffering for monetary purposes.

Keeping a pain journal

You can do your case a big favor by keeping a journal during your recovery and personal injury process. Here, you should record how well you are coping, or not coping, with the day-to-day issues that plague many car accident victims. This journal should reflect your recovery struggles, your medical treatments, physical therapy and more personal issues like how your family is dealing with the wreck. Writing all these things down can become a powerful release, an accurate record of your progress and a written history of the impact of the wreck. Your pain journal will come in handy for:

1. Settlement negotiations

2. Depositions

3. Your trial

Your medical expenses

The other way to evaluate your pain and suffering for monetary purposes is by looking at the dollar amount of your medical treatments. This figure gets fed into a calculation that multiples by a factor that corresponds with the seriousness of your injury. It can seem confusing, but this is actually the method used by many insurance adjusters and personal injury attorneys to arrive at a figure to either sue for or offer as a settlement. You can test drive the calculator to get an idea of what you might expect.

This method is based on the idea that the higher your medical expenses, the worse your pain and suffering. It's important to understand, however, that the figure the calculator arrives at is just the starting amount. Your personal injury attorney will be negotiating to make sure that you are adequately compensated for your unique situation.

Speak to an attorney like those at Hodge Law Firm to learn more about getting compensated for your pain and suffering.