The amount of settlement you get after a personal injury accident depends on the circumstances of your case. But insurance adjusters use similar criteria to value claims, so you need to know about them.
What do Insurance Companies Have to Pay For?
The defendant generally has to compensate you for:
• Medical expenses
• Lost income – that can result from recovery or from suffering from a temporary or permanent injury that leaves you unable to work for a certain period of time.
• Permanent disability or disfigurement
• Pain and suffering – examples include stress, embarrassment, depression, and strained family relations, among other things. You are said to experience pain and suffering if extreme depression leaves you unable to take care of your kids or enjoy sex.
• Property damage
• Loss of enjoyment of life – you can get damages for missed family time. You can also be compensated for missing school, training, vocational programs, and/or special events.
That’s if the defendant is found guilty of causing your personal injury accident and your bodily injuries. In most instances, the defendant will be insured, so his or her insurance company will compensate you accordingly.
How do Insurance Companies Calculate Damages?
Insurance adjusters use a formula to calculate damages. They can add special damages since those have monetary values., but it’s hard for them to calculate general damages. For example, pain and suffering are general damage, and it’s hard to calculate exactly how much suffering pain and suffering can cause a person since it’s all subjective.
Insurers use a formula to calculate damages. They take the total amount of special damages and multiply that by a formula to arrive at general damages. Adjusters apply a formula to determine the total amount of general damages to award you.
That formula is a multiple that can range from 1.5 to 5. Minor injuries tend to receive a multiple that’s no higher than 2. More severe injuries, however, tend to get a multiple of 5. The reasoning is that more severe injuries will take longer to recover from and have a greater impact on your life. The adjuster will add these two figures and tack on lost income to calculate your final settlement.
Determining Each Party’s Percentage of Fault
That’s crucial since it determines how high of a settlement amount, you’ll get. The higher the percentage of fault of the other party, the bigger the settlement you’ll get. Of course, your settlement will be decreased by the percentage of your fault if you were found to be at fault. It is best to leave the legalities to your injury lawyer in Kanata as they understand how to calculate the damages and negotiate with the insurance adjusters.