From an Injury Attorney in El Paso: Compensation You Can Seek After a Serious Injury in Texas

1. Economic Damages

The first type of compensation you can seek is for your economic damages, which essentially refers to all the losses you sustained that are quantifiable with bills and receipts. This includes medical bills, lost wages, property damage, etc.

Medical Bills

Any medical bill that has to do with your accident and injury is potentially compensable. This would include not only emergency treatment you may have received at the scene of an accident or transport to the hospital, but also hospital stays, surgeries, medications you were required to take, physical therapy, rehab services, etc.

With most cases, it's best not to bring a claim until you've reached the point of "maximum medical improvement." This is the point at which, ideally, you have fully recovered, but at least you have recovered as much as the doctors believe you will be able to. Once you've reached this point, it's possible to get a good idea of what your medical needs may be going into the future. You can claim compensation for future medical expenses if you will have ongoing disability, but it is harder to claim for this and usually requires the help of expert witnesses along with your lawyer to come up with a number that is reasonable.

Lost Wages

If you had to miss work because of your injury, you should be compensated for the wages you would normally have earned during that time. Again, if you have been permanently disabled and will not be able to work the same job into the future, your lawyer can help you to calculate what kind of compensation you could get for this.

The assumption will always be that, even if you cannot return to your previous job, you can retrain to a new job, so compensation would likely only be awarded to compensate you until you reach that point. In some cases, you may be able to recover compensation for lost promotion opportunities, though this can be difficult to prove. If you were in the habit of taking a certain amount of overtime every week, and those overtime hours were available during the time you were injured, you may also be able to claim that.

Property Damage

If any of your property was damaged by the accident, you should be compensated for this. This might be a vehicle in a car accident, computers or valuable mobile phones, or any other property that you own and have now lost. Again, you'll have to be able to show the value of what was lost, and your injury attorney in El Paso can help you make a good case for all the lost property that you should be compensated for.

Other Items

If you've incurred any other monetary expenses as a direct result of an injury caused by someone else, you may potentially be able to claim compensation for it. So, for example, if you ordinarily mow your own lawn but had to hire someone to do so for a couple of months because you were unable to keep up with it due to injury, you may be able to include this.

If you would normally drive your own car to and from medical appointments but now have to take an Uber because your car is destroyed or because you are unable to drive, this also might be compensable. Again, you have to talk with your lawyer about your specific situation to get a good sense of what you might be able to claim for compensation.

2. Non-Economic Compensation

Non-economic compensation is for damages that can't be easily quantified with a receipt. The most famous of this type is "pain and suffering," but non-economic damages also include mental anguish and anxiety, loss of consortium, and even loss of quality of life. These damages can add a lot to your claim; however, they are also more difficult to prove, and it requires the skill of an experienced attorney to make a good case for why you should receive them.

In most cases, you cannot claim non-economic compensation if you have no economic compensation damages. In other words, if you were in a minor accident and feel anxiety and stress over it, but the accident did not hurt you and did not damage your property, you can't claim just mental anguish in most cases. Talk with your attorney to learn more.

Pain and Suffering

This refers to compensation for what you directly suffered as a result of an injury. The most common way of calculating pain and suffering is either multiplying your economic damages by a number from one to five, depending on the severity of your injuries, or by calculating an amount for each day that you suffered.

Mental Anguish

If your injuries and other losses caused you to suffer significant depression, anxiety, or other kinds of mental anguish, you may be able to claim compensation for this. You will likely need to show this through testimony from a therapist or counselor to get compensation.

Loss of Consortium

Loss of consortium refers to the loss of the intimacy of a family relationship: most commonly that between spouses. It's most common for the family to claim loss of consortium after the death of a loved one in a wrongful death lawsuit, but there can occasionally be times when an injured person themselves can claim it if they are abandoned by a spouse, and it can be shown that this is a direct result of their injury and the changes it made to their relationship. This can be tricky, as it must also be shown that no other factors were involved, so again, you must speak to an attorney.

Loss of Quality of Life

If there are particular things you used to enjoy doing which you are now unable to do anymore, such as kayaking or rock climbing, you may be able to claim compensation for this.

3. Punitive Damages

Punitive damages are extremely rare. They are not designed to compensate a victim for anything. Their only purpose is to punish the person or entity responsible for an accident in order to send a message and deter others.

In order for the accident to result in punitive damages, the behavior of the other party has to go well beyond just ordinary negligence. They must have deliberately attempted to hurt you or been so egregiously and recklessly negligent that the courts find it important to send a message.

For more details on what your case might be worth, schedule a free consultation now with us at Cesar Ornelas Injury Law for help in El Paso and throughout Texas, New Mexico, and Northern California.