Can you receive damages for mental suffering after a car accident?
This past October a New York City resident by the name of Leonard Shoulders was waiting for a bus at East 183rd and Third Avenue in the Bronx when the sidewalk beneath him collapsed. He was swallowed into a sinkhole where he fell more than twelve feet into a pit of rats. His rescue was delayed by his inability to scream for fear he would further agitate the rodents and one would crawl into his mouth. While many vehicular accidents are not as emotionally horrifying as what happened to Leonard, they do often come with trauma and long-lasting harm to the victim’s mental state. This mental anguish can be worth as much, or more, than the physical or bodily damages from the accident if successfully proven. Below are some important aspects to understand about the non-economic damages that might result from being in an accident that was not your fault.
Economic versus non-economic damages
When courts award money in personal injury cases such as car accidents, the financial compensation they award can be divided into two categories: economic and non-economic damages.
The economic damages are usually tied to easily identified financial losses that the plaintiff suffered as a result of the accident. This includes such factors as medical treatments and hospital stays, medications, physical therapy, and future medical care that person will have to undergo. Economic damages also includes past, present and future lost income, vehicular and personal property losses, and economic damages. Courts may also factor in such considerations as whether the plaintiff was due for a regularly scheduled raise and if the plaintiff now faces a diminished career trajectory as a result of the accident, as well missed retirement fund contributions.
On the other side, non-economic damages, which encompass PTSD and mental anguish as a result of the accident, are not nearly as straightforward for a court to quantify. Non-economic damages are compensation determinations for future quality of life and the mental effects of the accident. One way that courts calculate non-economic damages is as a multiple of the economic damages. This means that if the case is successfully made for non-economic damages, the court may award the plaintiff an amount, often between 1.5 to five times the amount of the economic damages based on the severity of the impact on that plaintiff.
It is also important to note that the “emotional distress” referred to in non-economic damages can include a wide range of types of mental anguish. This can include post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, fear of driving, humiliation, insomnia, and any other mental conditions directly resulting from an altered mindstate due to the accident.
Caps on pain and suffering damages
Despite relatively recent news headlines about the Missouri-imposed caps on non-economic damages in lawsuits, it is important to know that those caps only apply to medical malpractice related wrongful death lawsuits. This means that most other types of personal injury cases resulting from vehicle accidents have an uncapped amount of potential non-economic damages.
What has to be proven
Emotional distress is much harder to quantify than damage to physical property or loss of income, so there are several determinations that must be proven by the plaintiff. The plaintiff must show that the accident severely altered their mindstate and created intense emotional distress for an extended period of time. They must be able to articulate the harm this trauma has caused on themselves and those around them, and that their mental changes are directly related to the conduct or actions of the at-fault party. Finally, there must be third-party validation of the symptoms and their severity from a physician, as well as witness testimonials.
If you or someone you know has potentially experienced emotional trauma as a result of an accident, send me a message or reach out to our team at https://libertytriallawgroup.com/.