If you decide to sue a person or business, that’s a civil action. The police can bring charges for criminal actions, but you can only sue for civil ones. If you hire an attorney and sue someone, you should be sure they’re highly skilled in the area of personal injury law.
You might sue for economic or non-economic damages. Non-economic damages can increase your lawsuit settlement amount, but you shouldn’t feel obligated to include them in your lawsuit. You should only do so if you consult with your lawyer and they agree that it makes sense to take this action. They can look at the details of your case to make that determination.
In this article, we’ll talk about non-economic damages in personal injury cases. You can always overlook them, but sometimes, that’s a mistake.
What Does the Term “Non-Economic Damages” Mean?
In civil lawsuits, if you sue because you’re trying to get the person or entity that you allege harmed you to cover things like lost wages from missing work or medical bills, then you can include those in the economic damages category. Maybe a drunk driver hit your vehicle. You have to miss work while you’re recovering, and you have medical bills piling up as well.
If you add up those bill amounts and your lost wages and sue the party you hold responsible, you’re trying to get them to pay for your economic losses. Maybe you feel that you also have some losses on which you can’t easily put a dollar amount, though.
For instance, if you endured pain and suffering that you believe the guilty party caused, those would land in the non-economic damages category. Maybe you also can’t do some of the things that you once could because of an inaction or action by the defendant. You can try to get money from them for that reason, and that would fall into the non-economic damages category as well.
Any non-economic damages you’re reporting can still get you money from the defendant in a personal injury case if the jury agrees with your assessment that the defendant caused what happened. Proving that can present distinct challenges, though.
You’d better hope you hired the right lawyer and that they have an excellent investigative team. That’s the best way to secure a settlement offer or to get a jury’s verdict in your favor that includes money for non-economic damages.
Not Including Non-Economic Damages in a Lawsuit
Many people don’t like the idea of suing another individual or company. They know that such lawsuits can take a lot of time and energy. You probably don’t want to have to plunge yourself into that quagmire.
If you feel certain that a company or individual harmed you, though, you may think that you have little choice. Even then, perhaps you tell your lawyer that you only want to get back money for your economic damages.
You can probably tally up those losses pretty easily. If you missed work for a couple of weeks while recovering following an injury or illness that you allege someone else caused, you can calculate exactly how much money you would have made during the shifts you missed.
You can add to that any doctor bills that you had to cover. Maybe your insurance covered some of the medical costs, but you also had some copays.
You can sue the entity or person who you allege harmed you for this exact dollar amount. That ignores any non-economic damages that you sustained, though.
Calculating what you might get or ask for if you believe you sustained some non-economic damages often becomes difficult. After all, if you can’t walk anymore because of something you feel the defendant did, what dollar amount could equal losing this vital ability?
You might need to look at precedent when determining how much money you should ask for in such a situation. However, keep in mind that if you ask for nothing in non-economic damages, you may feel after the trial that you didn’t get enough.
How a Settlement or Jury’s Verdict in Your Favor Can Make You Feel
If you decide not to pursue non-economic damages in a personal injury lawsuit, you might regret it later. Your lawyer will probably try to tell you the same thing, especially if you sustained permanent harm from the defendant’s action or inaction.
You presumably want money to pay for things like medical bills or lost wages, but what if you can’t reclaim your life like it was before after assessing the harm the defendant caused? If their carelessness or negligence put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life or something similarly impactful, then you might feel a righteous sense of outrage because of that.
You must think about not just how you feel now, but how you’ll likely feel in the coming years. Maybe the doctors told you that you can never fully recover the abilities that you had before.
If so, you might feel like you need to get a lot more money from the defendant than just what will cover your economic losses. You may feel that unless you walk away with a much large chunk than that, you will not feel like you got justice.
Frankly, even if you ask for millions in economic and non-economic damages, you might still never feel like the money can balance the scales if your life’s outlook and prospects seem dramatically different because of what the defendant did. If you can’t work anymore because of their negligence or carelessness, or if you can’t have a physical relationship with your partner or spouse anymore, you might want to get every penny you can out of the guilty party.
No one can force you to sue a person or company for economic or non-economic damages. If you don’t try to get the latter, though, you may regret that bitterly in the years after the lawsuit.
