While there are hundreds of factors impacting the value of a car accident claim, the greatest determining influence is often the severity of your injuries. If your injuries are more severe, you will most likely have higher medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Greater expenses and losses often lead to a higher damages award.
Financial Losses
Your payout will likely be higher when the car accident causes you significant financial hardship. Financial losses can come in many different forms.
Medical Expenses
The cost of recovering from an injury often includes:
- Surgery,
- Emergency transportation,
- X-rays,
- Lab testing,
- Medications, and
- Physical therapy.
Severe injuries can cause years of recovery and continuous medical appointments. An accident claim can include projected costs of future and ongoing treatment.
Lost Wages
If your injuries prevent you from attending work or cause you to miss work to attend medical appointments, you may be able to recover those lost wages and raise the value of your car accident claim. If you have a permanently reduced ability to work, your claim should also take that into account by calculating the difference between your pre-accident earnings and your projected future income.
Out-of-Pocket Costs
An injury can often make it impossible for you to complete routine tasks such as caring for your children or mowing your lawn. You can add the expense of hiring extra help to your car accident claim. Examples of service costs include:
- Childcare,
- Home maintenance,
- Transportation,
- Grocery delivery, and
- Pet care.
Keep track of expenses you would not have incurred but for the collision. Your accident claim can include the costs of “replacing” your normal domestic activities while you recover from an injury.
Property Damage
The value of your car accident claim can be affected by the severity of damage to your vehicle. Your award may include the cost to repair or replace the vehicle.
Once a car has been in an accident, the worth of that car goes down. This is true even after repairs. In Mississippi, this loss is called diminished value. Diminished value is the difference between the market value of the car right before the accident and the market value of your car after the repairs. You may be able to include your car’s loss in value as a factor in your accident claim.
Pain and Suffering
Car accidents take a toll on your physical and psychological well-being as well as financial status. The value of your claim may change if you suffer certain physical or emotional symptoms such as:
- Loss of sleep,
- Anxiety,
- Depression,
- Emotional distress,
- Fear,
- Pain, or
- Weight loss.
It can be difficult to assign a monetary value to physical pain or reduced mental health. There are various methods attorneys use to calculate the value of pain and suffering in a car accident claim. The results often depend on the degree to which your pain and suffering impacted your life after the accident.
Fault
A major factor affecting a car accident claim value is the actions of the drivers leading up to the collision. If multiple drivers contributed to the cause of the crash in some way, the court will assign each driver a percentage of the fault. This is called comparative negligence. If the court determines the accident to be 10% your fault and 90% the fault of the other driver, the court may reduce your payout by 10%. As a pure comparative negligence state, Mississippi allows a driver to recover some amount of damages as long as they are determined to be less than 100% at fault.
Drugs and Alcohol
If the other driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you may be able to ask the court for punitive damages. Punitive damages are meant to deter and punish illegal or immoral behavior. For the court to award punitive damages, you need to show the impairment of the driver directly caused the accident. The court will award punitive damages only if it believes the accident would not have happened if not for the gross negligence or reckless disregard of the offending driver.
There are limits to the amount of punitive damages a court will award. The court will take circumstantial facts into consideration when determining that amount. Situational factors include:
- If the driver is a habitual offender,
- If the driver intended to cause harm to others,
- If the driver attempted to evade responsibility, and
- The driver’s financial condition and net worth.
Recovering punitive damages is not always an option in car accident claims. Determining who is at fault and to what extent is a complicated process. Having a knowledgeable lawyer on your side could reduce your percentage of shared liability and leave you with a more favorable award.
Your Lawyer
When it comes to knowing what might affect the value of your car accident claim, who you choose to represent you matters. Having an experienced and passionate legal team could be the determining factor between receiving an insufficient payout and receiving the compensation you need. At Smith & Holder, PLLC, we use our smart and creative legal strategies to help our clients get every penny they deserve. Contact us now to learn more about how our aggressive negotiating techniques have resulted in significant financial compensation awards for our clients.
