The Herron Law Firm, a leading personal injury attorney in Portland, Oregon, would like to explain to the public how to determine what your car accident injuries are worth. Many car accident victims underestimate the damages they suffered in a car accident and do not get as much money as they should.
Generally, the compensation you are entitled to after your car accident is the total of your injuries and car repairs. Regarding your car, you should consider the car’s initial value, the condition at the time of the crash, depreciation, and how many miles it has.
Also, when considering how much repairs are, you should look at the parts that need to be replaced, rather than offering an average number for repairing front-end damage, for instance.
Injuries are harder to calculate because there is no exact price for a type of injury or body part. Also, the effects of a personal injury can vary a great deal from person to person. Your Portland car accident attorney will collect all the vital information and use a formula to estimate the value of your claim.
After the accident, the liable driver’s insurance company must pay these costs:
- Medical costs and related expenses
- Lost earnings from work
- Pain and suffering
- Permanent physical disability
- Emotional damages
In a car accident where you are not claiming pain and suffering, it is quite easy to determine a settlement amount. You just need to add up the medical and repair bills, as well as lost wages. But when there is vehicle replacement and pain and suffering costs, the insurance company will need to provide you with more money.
Insurance companies use several methods to determine the value of your personal injury claim. The first is the multiplier method. This works by assigning a multiplier to the total of your economic damages. The multiplier method assumes that injuries with quantifiable damages, such as hospital costs, usually involve serious auto accidents and require a multiplier to determine the true cost of the crash.
For example, if your medical bills after an accident are $5000 and you have $1000 in lost wages, your attorney may multiply the sum – $6000 – by a number between 1 and 5. Three is the most common multiplier for moderate injuries. In this case, you might end up with a settlement of $18,000.
However, your settlement could be for more or less depending on how severe your injuries are. If you are dealing with a long-term disability, you could have a 4 or 5 multiplier. Attorneys and insurance companies have a good idea of what the level of pain and suffering is for assorted injuries.
For example, the multiplier used for a whiplash injury that requires a month of physical therapy might be a 2. But if you have a broken hip that requires surgery, your multiplier could be a 4 or 5.
Another way to determine pain and suffering is to use the per diem method. This involves providing you with a monetary amount that you receive every day that you suffer from injuries after a car accident. It depends on the insurance companies involved as far as how they determine your pain and suffering.
It is important to remember that you always need to consult with a personal injury attorney Portland, Oregon such as The Herron Law Firm when you are in a serious accident. A serious accident involves heavy vehicle damage and injuries with thousands of dollars of medical bills. Your best chance for a fair settlement is to rely on skilled attorneys to negotiate with stingy insurance companies.
