Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog
People ask me all the time: how do insurance companies put a price tag on my personal injury case? How can they arbitrarily put a price tag on my life; on my income loss; on my pain and suffering!!! I’m getting mad just thinking about this. Who do they think they are!?!?!?
Seems like such a subjective exercise; doesn’t it?
Remain calm my keener friends. There’s some method to the madness which makes up a personal injury law claim.
One thing you need to understand, is that personal injury damages aren’t lumped together into one big pot of stew like you may think. On the contrary, there are many different heads to personal injury law damages. Goldfinger Injury Lawyers knows all about these heads of damages. It’s what we do.
When it comes to pain and suffering damages, those damages are capped in Canada. If you’d like to know the difference between US and Canadian damages awards particularly for pain and sufferering, here’s a great article written by some weirdo Toronto Personal Injury Lawyer who thinks he knows what he’s talking about.
Anyways, in Canada, your damages for pain and suffering are capped to around $315,000-$325,000 or so. These damages are awarded to the guy who’s lost an arm, lost a leg, brain injured, taking Percocets round the clock, depressed, nightmares, can’t function etc. You get my drift. You don’t want to be, or want to know that guy. It’s sad. Trust me. I’ve represented that guy on many occassions. No matter how large the sum of money we get him, it will NEVER replace what he’s lost. Hashtag “Money isn’t the cure to all of life’s problems” anyone?
If your back hurts around the clock and you’re taking Advil for your back pain, just think about the guy who’s lost his limbs, can’t walk, can’t think, and pops Percocets like they’re Smarties.
On top of your general damages for pain and suffering, you also might be awarded some money for your past and future income loss, or loss of competitive advantage in the workplace. If you were retired at the time of your accident, and earning a pension, then you likely won’t get any money under this head of damages. The same applies if you were unemployed, disabled from working, or not employable on account of your health. To read more about how loss of income claims are calculated in personal injury claims, here’s another great article written by some Toronto personal injury lawyer who I really enjoy reading. I think his stuff is just grand.
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Let’s say you were a Caregiver for your children at the time of the accident. This means that you looked after your young children who were dependant on you for all of their care needs. You cooked their meals, cleaned them, bathed them, clothed them, took them to the park etc. Since the accident, you weren’t able to do all of your normal caregiving activities. That claim has value as well. If you were to pay a caregiver to do that work at a rate of $13/hr, how much would that amount to? Once you do that calculation, then we’re again able to put an objective number on your personal injury claim. The insurance company will certainly argue to the contrary, but this is how the personal injury bar and the Court’s try to quantify these sort of claims.
The same principal also applies to housekeeping and homemaintenance claims. For a breakdown of some accident benefits you can expect to recieve from your personal injury claim, proceed to the FAQ section of this great personal injury lawyer’s website. What I like best about this website, is the Goldfinger Guarantee. That’s nifty.
After all of the heads of damages have been added up, plus some money thrown in for legal costs and disbursements/out-of-pocket expenses (sometimes, not all the time), then an insurer is able to quantify your personal injury claim.
Of course there are many other variables which insurance companies and Courts look to when calculating personal injury claims. But I can’t share with you all of Goldfinger Injury Lawyers’s secrets, now can I. Liability, Causation, Contributory Negligence, Credibility, Likeability of the Plaintiff, Previous Medical Condition, Pre-Existing Condition, Life Expectancy and the credibility of the medical experts all come to mind. These issues are far more complex to write about than in a quick personal injury law blog post.
Have any of you seen the KONY 2012 campaign going on over the internet? The video is well produced, but it’s about 30 minutes or so. If you have the time, I guess it’s worth watching. Way quicker is just reading the guy’s Wikipedia entry. It will tell you that he’s wanted for crimes against humanity and ought to the tried at the International Criminal Court. I guess I should support the movement and help make him famous so that he gets caught and tried for his crimes against humanity. So, here I am doing, doing my part. Linking stuff of my Toronto Personal Injury Lawyer Blog to Kony. Thinking of Kony makes me think of a Coney Island Hot Dog. That makes me hungry. Here’s a picture of Koney……and a hot dog…..Can you guess which one is the international criminal and which one is delicious to eat?
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