It’s likely that you’ve been to the doctor to treat accident-related injuries or that your car hasn’t been drivable since the day of the crash. Whether you have the funds to front these costs or not, you don’t deserve to pay for the aftermath when the accident wasn’t your fault in the first place.
California residents who hope to receive repayment for accident-related costs might be able to receive both economic and non-economic damages through a settlement.
Economic damages
There are many expenses that have a direct cost or monetary value attached to them that you can encounter after an accident. These are economic damages. One common category of economic damages are medical expenses. This may include getting money to cover the cost of an ambulance, medical bills or physical therapy.
Another type of compensation collected by many personal injury victims are lost wages. Whether you only missed out on one workday or have been in and outside of the doctor’s office the past few months to treat accident-related injuries, you might be able to receive money to make up for missed pay.
Chances are your car will have damage to a certain degree. You can also seek money you need to repair your car or for the value of it. When the car repairs are close to or outweigh the value of the car, the insurance company may consider your car to be a total loss. Once it’s been determined that the car is a total loss, an insurance adjuster will come up with a settlement that is meant to be close to your car’s pre-accident value. But many car accident victims may feel as though the settlement offer is unfair or less than their outstanding car loan amount. In these cases, victims may benefit from working with an attorney to file a lawsuit to receive enough funds to replace the vehicle.
Non-economic damages
There’s also a set of damages that don’t always have a clear value. This includes compensation designed to offset physical pain one experiences or the mental toll the accident has on an individual. There are also injuries that don’t allow people to be as close to their loved ones for a short or extended period after the accident. The legal term for this is loss of companionship — which you can also recover funds for through the claims process. In cases where victims can show that the driver’s sheer negligence led to the incident, they may be able to receive punitive damages too.
An experienced personal injury attorney can help you determine what kind of and how much compensation is worth seeking in your case.