If you decide that you want to sue someone, you will probably need to think long and hard about that. Personal injury lawsuits can consume your life if you engage in one. You need to consider how much of yourself you will need to put into it before you decide whether you should move forward.
If you feel that it’s worth filing a lawsuit against a person or business entity that harmed you, then you will probably try to get both economic and non-economic damages. Non-economic damages can significantly increase your lawsuit settlement, but you should only try to collect them if you feel the situation calls for that.
In this article, we will discuss non-economic damages and how they can change your personal injury lawsuit’s whole complexion.
What Does the Term “Non-Economic Damages” Mean?
First, let’s take a moment to define the term “non-economic damages.” In the personal injury law niche, when you sue a person or company, you’re doing so because you allege that they harmed you or made you ill. Either some action on their part did that, or perhaps you can point to an inaction on their part instead.
In either case, you and your attorney need to attempt to connect what this person or company did or didn’t do to your illness or injury. If you can’t draw that direct line, then you likely won’t win your lawsuit.
Assuming that you can convince the jury that you’re in the right, then you can try to collect economic damages. The term means any economic losses that you sustained because the person or entity that you’re suing harmed you.
Those might include lost wages, the cost of medical bills, or the cost to repair your car after a vehicular accident where you suing the other driver. However, you might also sue for additional damages that fall into the non-economic category.
Such damages will compensate you for what you experienced if you feel the person or entity that you’re suing harmed you, but there’s not a specific sum that you’re trying to recoup. In other words, you’re trying to collect money for subjective, intangible losses.
You May Feel You Endured Pain and Suffering
If you need an example of the kind of non-economic damages that you might try to get from the defendant in your personal injury lawsuit, then you may start with pain and suffering. You will often hear this term in personal injury lawsuits.
Let’s say that a drunk driver smashed into your vehicle. They did so while going at a decent rate of speed. The crash broke your arm.
You had to have surgery to repair it. You would have to imagine that you endured some significant pain and suffering from the crash, the surgery, and during the lengthy recovery process.
You can sue for the money to cover your medical and physical therapy bills. However, you may also want additional money to cover that pain and suffering that you experienced.
As we mentioned before, the total amount that you might try to get that you think will balance the scales of justice during such a lawsuit might increase quite a bit if you’re going after the defendant for both economic and non-economic damages.
You May Experience Loss of Consortium
You may also feel that you need to sue for additional money if you experienced loss of consortium. That means your relationship with someone in your family changed due to what you allege the defendant did or didn’t do.
For instance, if you can’t have physical intimacy with a spouse or partner after the accident or incident that injured you, then that’s loss of consortium. Maybe you don’t feel that you can show them the same emotional support or friendship that you once could.
As you can imagine, if you’re experiencing that, then you might feel the defendant should pay you a substantial chunk of money to repair the damage their actions or inactions caused. You might expect to get more in damages if you will never fully recover.
Asking for Non-Economic Damages Can Complicate Matters
If you ask for only economic damages in a personal injury lawsuit, then that simplifies matter somewhat. You can probably produce medical bills, the bill you had to pay to repair damage to your car, or pay stubs that show how much money in lost wages you didn’t receive during your recovery time.
If you ask for non-economic damages as well, though, you’re probably asking for an amount that seems at least a bit arbitrary. How much should you get for your pain and suffering? How much should you reasonably ask for if you have loss of consortium?
You will probably need to talk to your lawyer about that. They can point to similar cases that might establish precedent. The jury, if the case ever gets that far, will probably look at similar cases as well to try to arrive at a number they find fair.
In theory, you can ask for any number from the defendant that you want. However, if you ask for a sum that seems wildly out of sync with what others collected in similar cases, then it’s not at all likely that you will get it.
You Need to Argue Convincingly to Get the Money You Feel You’re Due
You should keep something else in mind when you’re trying to get both economic and non-economic damages. You need to convince the jury that they should hold the person or business entity that you’re suing responsible because you can present plenty of evidence that conclusively establishes that.
You can usually get economic damages much easier. If the jury feels that the defendant did indeed harm you, and you can show the amount that you paid in bills, you should have that money coming your way.
To get non-economic damages, though, you may have to describe in detail how the defendant’s actions or inactions negatively impacted your life.
