How to work out your general damages

The surprise and trauma of a car accident leaves most victims confused and anxious. After the experience the victim is faced with a great deal of paperwork in addition to expensive medical treatment. Some people end up taking off time from work, without pay, to deal with painful injuries.

If you ever have the misfortune to be injured in a car accident, you are entitled to Special Damages as well as general damages. How much should you settle for? This coverage entails the cost of your medical treatment, prescriptions, and loss of income. Simply add up the receipts and submit that to the at-fault driver’s insurance adjuster. You also need to be reimbursed for general damages. You need to be careful about this total because the insurance adjuster will ask you to sign a document releasing them from further liability due to the accident.

We must know the meaning of damage in general. It doesn’t mean only the destruction of properties we can assess the extent and tag a price for claiming. Suppose if we have a damage done to our emotions or expectations how can we measure the damages done? The physical damages are not easy to bring under any sort of compensation, i.e. mental agony caused by breakage in marriage, pain in a death of your kith and kin. Not only that even pain in body, which you can’t see with your eyes. Thus damages are of various dimensions.

One approach is to multiply the Special Damages settlement by some number between two and four, as a rule of thumb. But this is only a starting point. If your injuries were not long lasting, debilitating, or emotionally distressing, you would stick to the low end of the spectrum. Yet if your injuries result in constant pain, either emotional or physical, this figure should be adjusted upwards.

A settlement might be increased if the defendant was guilty because of negligence rather than an accident.

Another way to estimate General Damages is to find a precedent. There are many accidents every year, so you should be able to look at how other parties have settled for guidance. The government transportation administration often collects this sort of data, which may even be available online.

The insurance adjuster will generally try to work to decrease whatever figure you come up with. Ensuring that you are treated fairly is really a matter of knowing your rights, understanding what reasonable settlement size is, and being familiar with precedent. Just because your injuries aren’t visible, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be compensated for them.

The author gives tips on car insurance and general damages on auto insurance.