Compensation in a Personal Injury Case

Personal Injury Damages

If you are hurt because of someone else’s actions, you may have the right to compensatory damages, which are meant to reimburse you for physical, emotional, and financial injuries. These damages can be broken down into economic and non-economic damages.

Punitive damages are available in rare cases. Instead of compensating you, these are meant to punish the wrongdoer and dissuade them from acting that way again. Most injury victims do not receive punitive damages. Courts only grant them in egregious situations.

Economic Damages

A significant portion of a personal injury settlement or award is economic damages. These are expenses or losses you have endured because of your injuries.

Economic damages include:

• Past and future medical expenses
• Travel to and from medical care
• Medical devices and supplies
• At-home nursing care or a rehabilitation facility
• Renovations to your home to accommodate a disability
• Lost wages
• Reduced earning capacity due to a disability
• Property damage

At Oronoz & Ericsson Injury Lawyers, we work closely with you to track all of your financial injuries during a personal injury case. We have years of experience calculating these damages. We won’t overlook anything.

Calculating Economic Damages

Calculating the value of these damages is relatively straightforward. We will use your bills to add up your expenses. We will contact your employer for a statement regarding your lost wages. We can work with an expert to calculate your future medical costs or reduced earning potential in more complex cases.

Is There a Limit on Economic Damages?

No, Nevada does not limit how much you can receive for your economic damages. We will fight for you to receive full and fair compensation for these injuries.

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages are for your genuine, but sometimes invisible, injuries.

Non-economic damages include:

• Physical pain and suffering
• Emotional distress
• Mental anguish
• Disfigurement
• Disability
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Reduced quality of life
• Mental health issues (depression, anxiety, PTSD)
• Loss of consortium

You do not have to suffer a physical injury to recover compensation for non-economic injuries. However, it is much harder to demand payment without proof of a bodily injury. When you can make a connection between your physical and emotional injuries, you have a greater chance of recovering compensation and maximizing your settlement or award.

Calculating Non-Economic Damages

These damages are much harder to calculate and prove, which is why we recommend working with an experienced Nevada, personal injury attorney. We work closely with you and your medical providers to establish your pain and suffering and other non-economic damages. Evidence of these damages may include mental health care records, journal entries, photos of your injuries, treatment and recovery, videos, and witness testimony.

You do not want to under-or over-value your non-economic damages. Under-valuing them could lead you to accept a low settlement offer. Over-valuing them could make it difficult to negotiate a fair resolution with the insurance company and delay receiving compensation.

A common way to calculate non-economic damages is to use a multiplier of your compensatory damages. We may use a number between 1 and 5, depending on your injuries’ nature and severity. For example, if you suffered severe injuries and your compensatory damages amount to $100,000, we may multiply that figure by 3 to reach a total of $300,000.

Another method is per diem, which is a daily rate. We may ask that you receive a certain amount of compensation for each day of your recovery.

The insurance company will have a formula for determining non-economic damages. Each side comes to their conclusion, and then we usually negotiate a fair middle ground.

Is There a Limit on Non-Economic Damages?

In most cases, no, Nevada does not limit how much you can receive for non-economic damages. The law simply requires them to be reasonable.

An exception is for medical malpractice cases. You can only receive up to $350,000 for pain and suffering in a medical malpractice case. Another exception is for claims against a government employee who was negligent within the scope of their employment. You can only receive up to $100,000 against a government employee.

Punitive Damages

To win punitive damages, you have to prove more than ordinary negligence. In Nevada, a court can only award these exemplary damages if you prove the other person’s conduct involved fraud, malice, oppression, or the conscious disregard for their actions’ harmful consequences.

Nevada law caps punitive damages at $300,000 if your compensatory damages are less than $100,000, or three times the amount of your compensatory damages if they are $100,000 or more. There are exceptions to this cap, though. In some cases, like against a drunk driver or the manufacturer of a defective product, you can receive whatever punitive damages the court believes are appropriate.