What Can a Personal Injury Lawyer Get You Compensation For?

If you’ve been injured in an accident, someone may have advised you to call a personal injury lawyer. But if you’ve never had reason to call a lawyer before, you may be either intimidated or just unsure of what a personal injury lawyer can do for you.

At Salmu Law Firm in San Diego, we understand your hesitation. We receive calls every day from people who express doubt and anxiety about the injury claims process but whose cases very clearly qualify them for compensation.

Our San Diego personal injury lawyers can help you make sense of it all and get compensation for the following

Medical care and related expenses

Missed work time or other lost income

Pain and other physical suffering

Permanent physical disability or disfigurement

Loss of family, social, and educational experiences

Property loss

Emotional damages

Understanding the Damages Formula

When insurance adjustors decide to compensate you for your injuries, they apply a loose formula to determine where to begin the negotiation. In that formula, you have basically three parts:

Medical expenses – also called “special damages”

Pain and suffering, disability, emotional damages – also called “general damages.”

Lost income

Calculating your medical expenses and lost income is fairly simple because there’s paperwork involved – medical records, work schedules, etc. But calculating the general damages is more complex.

To account for general damages, the insurance adjustor will multiply special damages by anywhere from 1.5 to 5 – depending on the severity of the injuries. And then lost income will be added in, and the resulting number is where the settlement negotiation begins.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you suffer a minor (and temporary) injury in a car accident. Your medical expenses come to $1000, and you lose $500 in lost wages.  The insurance adjustor will begin with a figure anywhere from $2000 (your $1000 medical expenses times 1.5 plus $500 in lost wages) to $5500 (your medical expenses times 5 plus $500 in lost wages).

If there’s a formula, why do you need a personal injury lawyer?

Sure, if it were as simple as adding up numbers and plugging them into a formula, personal injury lawyers wouldn’t be as necessary as they often are. But it’s never that simple. There are several factors that affect whether your multiplier is closer to 1.5 or to 5. Remember, insurance companies want to pay out as little as they can, so it behooves them to keep your multiplier low.

Look at the above the example. There’s a big difference between a $2000 settlement and a $5500 settlement, isn’t there? Some of the following factors will determine where in the spectrum your multiplier falls:

Salmu Law Firm can help you understand your personal injury case – and receive the compensation you deserve.

At Salmu Law Firm, we don’t expect you to know all the ins and outs of your case before you call us. That’s our job, and that’s why we offer free case evaluations – so that we can help you understand the possible courses of action available, as well as their likely outcomes.

Give us a call today, and let’s see if we can get you on the road to recovery – and compensation.