COMMON TYPES OF COMPENSATION IN PERSONAL INJURY CASES
If you were injured and someone else was at fault, you should be compensated. While there are various types of damages available depending on the case, here are he most common types of compensation available in personal injury cases:
- Medical bills: You should be able to reimbursed for all of your medical costs necessary to treat the injuries that you suffered. One misconception many people have is that, if you have health insurance, you only need to be reimbursed for your out-of-pocket expenses such as deductibles or co-pays. This is not true — you should be compensated for all of your medical bills, regardless of how, or even if, they were paid. In many cases, your health insurance company, or the medical provider if the bills have not yet been paid, will seek reimbursement from what you’ve collected.
- Property Damage: If you vehicle or other property was damaged, you should be compensated for that damage.
- Pain and suffering and emotional distress: While pain and suffering is impossible to precisely quantify, it is nevertheless often the greatest damage by far that you will suffer. Because it is intangible, this is where insurance companies usually try to minimize what they will pay. The attorneys at Cohen & Winters strive to document exactly how the accident has effected your life and vividly convey this impact to the insurance company or a jury so that you will be awarded the greatest amount of compensation possible.
- Enhanced compensatory damages: Unlike many states, in most situations New Hampshire law does not allow for punitive damages – which are designed to not only compensate the victim but to punish the defendant. However, New Hampshire does provide for “enhanced compensatory damages” when the negligence was particularly severe.