An accident can cause intangible losses. You might have lost sleep due to pain and worry. Your happiness may have dropped as you lost the ability to engage in the activities you enjoyed. Sometimes, these intangible losses will persist even after your body has healed. For example, you may have flashbacks and nightmares for the rest of your life after a car accident.
You can seek compensation for these losses even though they have no inherent monetary value. These losses, sometimes called pain and suffering, have a bad reputation because some at-fault parties and insurers think victims pad their claims using them. However, these losses are real, and the law gives juries and insurers ways of putting a value on them.
What Are Non-Economic Losses?
Non-economic losses represent the diminishment in your quality of life due to the at-fault party’s actions. They can be contrasted with economic losses, which include all the financial costs caused by the other party’s negligent or wrongful acts. Thus, a medical bill is an economic loss, while the pain you endured during the doctor’s appointment is a non-economic loss.
Examples Of Non-Economic Losses
Non-economic losses can take many forms, including the following:
Physical Pain And Suffering
Physical pain and suffering represent the discomfort you experience from your injuries. When you experience pain, you might be unable to perform certain acts like walking, standing, and lifting. You may not even find a comfortable position for resting or sleeping.
Pain and suffering have both economic and non-economic aspects. The costs you incur for pain medication and medical treatments qualify as economic losses. The discomfort, worry, and anxiety you experience due to your injuries qualify as non-economic losses.
Mental Pain And Suffering
Mental pain and suffering have many other names, including mental anguish and emotional distress. This form of suffering can result from your injuries. For example, you might be concerned about the impact of your injuries on your long-term health. This distress can also arise from issues surrounding your injuries, such as the cost of your treatments.
This type of pain and suffering also has economic and non-economic costs. You incurred economic losses due to your mental pain and suffering when you paid a therapist for counseling. Recurring nightmares about your motorcycle accident would qualify as a non-economic form of mental pain and suffering.
Disability
Disability stems from the impact of your injuries on your physical and mental functions. The economic impact of disabilities includes the income you lost or the childcare services you paid for due to your injuries.
By contrast, the non-economic cost of your injuries affects your happiness and satisfaction. If you cannot work, you have financial worries. Your disabilities may make you reliant on others, eroding your self-esteem. These losses are non-economic.
Disfigurement
Disfigurement happens when your injuries alter your physical appearance. For example, you might experience facial injuries in a pedestrian accident that leave you with permanent, visible scars. This alteration in your appearance can erode your quality of life due to social anxiety and depression.
Dismemberment
Dismemberment is when you lose a body part or the functioning of a body part. Losing a body part alters your life forever. You will lose some abilities even if you get a prosthetic device. Additionally, up to 35% of amputees experience grief and depression over the loss of their body parts. Another 60% have anxiety over the loss, the future, and how people will see them.
Determining The Value Of Non-Economic Losses
Non-economic losses have no inherent price tag. As a result, at-fault parties and insurers face the risk that a sympathetic jury will award the victim a large pain and suffering award. Some industries have sought caps on non-economic damages to reduce their risk.
For example, Missouri passed a law capping non-economic compensation in medical malpractice cases. However, the courts struck this law down because it violated Missouri’s constitutional guarantee that a jury would determine how much to award in a lawsuit.
Juries are often instructed to use their experience and reasoned judgment to award a fair amount of non-economic compensation. The jurors will rely on the severity and duration of the victim’s injuries to guide them in measuring the victim’s non-economic losses.
A more severe injury, such as brain damage, or a permanent injury, such as the loss of a limb, will justify a larger non-economic award than a minor injury that will fully heal. Thus, your lawyer will prove your non-economic losses using your testimony about the extent of your injuries and how they impacted your life.
Recovering Compensation For Non-Economic Losses
You can seek compensation for non-economic losses resulting from your injuries. These losses encompass all the intangible ways your injuries eroded your happiness and quality of life. Contact a lawyer at Eason Car Accident and Personal Injury Lawyers at (314) 932-1066 to learn more about non-economic losses in your case.