Answers To Questions About Compensation For A Personal Injury Case

The accident victim that sustains a personal injury has the right to file a claim, and to seek some form of compensation. Yet many potential claimants have questions, regarding the rules that determine the extent to which a given victim gets compensated.

What is the effect of a victim’s prior injury?

Did the defendant cause foreseeable harm to the plaintiff? The aggravation of an existing injury qualifies as negligence. For that reason, any plaintiffs with a prior injury have the right to seek compensation.

Is there a minimum or maximum amount that claimants can recover?

No, the amount of money sought by an accident victim should reflect the nature of the victim’s injury. Those with a serious injury have reason to seek a larger compensation. The same rule holds for those that have undergone a more extensive treatment. The extent of the victim’s recovery also influences the size of the awarded compensation. Those that have become disabled or disfigured have the right to seek more money from the responsible party.

What are pain and suffering?

Certainly, that refers to any painful sensation. Still, that particular terms incorporate all sorts of mental and emotional problems, such as anguish, anxiety, worry, stress, sleeplessness, and the inability to enjoy life.

What is comparative negligence?

Personal Injury Lawyer Gloucester knows that if the evidence for a personal injury case has indicated that the plaintiff might be partly responsible for a given accident, or for a victim’s injury, then that same plaintiff could be charged with comparative negligence. That would mean the plaintiff’s damage award must be reduced. The percent of fault assigned to the plaintiff/claimant would determine the degree to which the award should be reduced.

What is the best time for a claimant to settle with an insurance company?

Lawyers always tell their clients to delay any negotiations until those same clients have reached the point of maximum medical improvement (MMI). That would be the point at which their doctor cannot offer any further treatment.

Why is that the best time to settle? Is that when a claimant could expect to be offered the largest amount of money? No, the ideal time for a settlement has nothing to do with the size of the offered compensation package. Instead, that selected time falls at the end of the victim’s/client’s recovery. At that time, the client should not have to worry about the development of further symptoms, or complicating factors. Lawyers seek to avoid the development of such problems.

Lawyers want to be sure that the insurance companies pay the medical expenses that might be associated with any such problem. That is why any experienced personal injury lawyer points to the date for achievement of MMI as the time to settle.