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How to Claim Compensation for Pain and Suffering & How much are you entitled to?
When you’re seriously injured it’s not just the physical toll it takes on you and your family but it can be mentally debilitating, which is why I want to highlight and explain pain and suffering compensation – and we’ll hopefully establish whether you’re eligible.
Having worked in personal injury law for over 15 years, I’ve seen first-hand the devastating impact of an injury and it’s so valuable to be able to utilise pain and suffering compensation to help people get their life back on track.
Now, in order to determine whether you’re eligible, you must first understand what pain and suffering compensation is:
Pain and suffering compensation also refer to as general damages and non-economic loss, is a lump sum amount awarded for the harmful impact the injury had on you both physically and mentally.
To help determine if you’re eligible for pain and suffering compensation largely depends on your type of claim. If you’ve been injured in a car accident, you have to have greater than 10% whole person impairment.
What is ‘Whole Person Impairment’? That’s just the technical term for the test that doctors use to measure the permanent damage the accident caused you both physically or mentally.
Once you’re over 10% it’s then up to a judge or assessor to determine your payout amount. This process is obviously very subjective which is why it’s very important that you have a lawyer who is not only a specialist but more importantly is willing to get to know you and your situation in order to best represent how the injury has overall impacted your life.
When it comes to pain and suffering compensation for public liability or medical negligence claims, it’s not the doctor who assess the whole person impairment but it’s a judge who assess all the circumstances of the accident and the person’s life and compares that to a most extreme case.
Now, in order to qualify you have to have greater than 14% of the most extreme case. As you could probably assume, this is once again very subjective and the level of client care you receive from your lawyer will have a huge impact on receiving compensation amount you’re entitled to.
For example, we recently won a case for a woman who had a serious leg injury when she fell in a train station. We brought a public liability claim and when it came time to assessing pain and suffering, we pointed out to the judge that she had a son with a disability. This meant that the impact on her life is greater than one might normally expect. Taking all that into account and all the other circumstances of her case, the judge awarded her over 0,000 for pain and suffering alone which has helped her and her son move forward from the injury.
Hopefully this has been helpful to you, but if you’re still unsure about pain and suffering compensation or need help with your claim, call Law Partners and you can have a confidential conversation with one of our specialist lawyers today.