A Close Look At Compensatory Damages

The two words compensatory damages make reference to the financial compensation that gets awarded to the victim that has filed a personal injury claim.

What is the value of the compensatory damages?

Its value is calculated by those men and women that award it. Those are the members of the jury and the judge at the appropriate courtroom proceedings.

What factors are considered by those that must make that calculation?

The victim’s age gets considered, because a younger victim faces a longer future. The victim’s injury could have added a note of uncertainty to that future. The nature of an extent of the injuries must be taken into consideration. A victim with catastrophic injuries deserves a larger compensation.

Car Accident Lawyer in Cambridge knows any evidence of contributory negligence would offer a reason for reducing the amount of money used to compensate the victim. Victims with large medical expenses typically find that their finances receive a significant boost from their compensatory damage awards. Changes in the victim’s earning capacity can affect the size of any monetary package awarded to that same incapacitated earner. In legal terms that altered earning capacity gets described as a loss of future earnings. Naturally, the loss of income faced by the individual that must recover from harm to his or her person gets compensated for that same loss.

An over-arching consideration

How was the victim’s life impacted by the accident? Have the effects of that unfortunate incident lowered the quality of that person’s life? Were there any forced changes?

Costs acknowledged during a calculation of damages

• Costs created by medical expenses
• Costs that arose due to utilization of rehabilitation services
• The loss of income; the loss of future income
• Costs associated with repairing or replacing damaged property
• Any loss of consortium; that would be loss of financial support, due to the fact that the person offering such support had been killed in the accident.

What must be proven before victim gets granted any award?

That the defendant acted in a careless and reckless manner and that the accident caused the victim’s injuries; disprove any charges of compensatory negligence, or accept consequences for discovery of such negligence.

The value of the financial costs faced by the injured man or woman. Proving the financial costs normally requires the presentation of relevant documents. Those would include things like bills from the hospital or from doctors’ offices. It might include bills from a repair shop, stubs from paychecks received prior to the accident, and receipts from a pharmacy or a retail store that sold medical equipment, such as wheelchairs.

Sometimes the victim has had to pay for modification to the family’s home. Documents that detail the cost of such changes should accompany all the other documents.

Share: