Most lawsuits are filed in Hackensack because someone negligently or intentionally injures another person. If you have been the victim of another’s conduct, our lawyers can help you recover compensation for any damages you sustained.
Personal injury claims can get complicated quickly as expenses stemming from your accident continue to mount. Fortunately, our team can assess and prove your case’s damages, so you have more free time to focus on recovering. We can collect your medical and employment records on your behalf to determine an accurate value for your economic losses. We will also discuss how your injuries have impacted your life and will continue to cause issues so we can get a fair estimate of your non-economic losses. If your injuries were caused by egregious or criminal conduct, we can also help you claim punitive damages.
Contact Agrapidis & Maroules, P.C., at (201) 777-1111 for a free case assessment with our personal injury lawyers.
Types of Damages You Can Recover in a Hoboken, NJ Personal Injury Claim
When you suffer a personal injury, you will likely have a range of damages you can pursue in a lawsuit. “Damages” is the umbrella term used to describe all the losses you suffered on account of the defendant’s negligence. These losses can be broken down into a few categories, including “compensatory” and “punitive” damages.
Compensatory damages stem directly from your accident and injuries and are awarded to you to make good those losses, according to N.J.S.A. § 2A:15-5.10. Compensatory damages can be further broken down into “special” and “general” damages, which represent your economic and non-economic losses, respectively.
Alternatively, punitive damages, also known as “exemplary damages,” are only awarded in lawsuits where aggravating circumstances contributed to the accident, as per § 2A:15-5.10. Our personal injury lawyers have decades of experience assessing the damages done to our clients and can help you pursue compensation for all the losses you have suffered. The following will help you understand the full spectrum of damages you can claim in your Hackensack lawsuit:
Special Damages
New Jersey law uses the term “special” damages to describe what other states refer to as economic damages. Many injury victims are primarily concerned with their economic losses since they are the damages that are most immediately felt.
After your accident, you might have been hospitalized for days or weeks, resulting in exorbitant medical costs. You will likely still have expensive medical bills even if you only visited the emergency room. If your injuries require you to complete a long treatment plan that includes surgeries and physical therapy, your medical damages will continue to skyrocket.
Thus, your medical expenses will usually be the core of the compensation in your claim. When we calculate your medical costs, we will add up the expenses of your current treatment, including any medication or equipment you need, and determine when you will reach maximum medical improvement if you are still treating. If your injuries require expensive treatment in the future, we do not need to wait for you to complete it before settling your claim. We can have medical experts project your future medical costs and add them to our calculations.
The other major portion of your special damages is likely to come from any income you lost as a result of your injuries keeping you out of work. If your injuries are relatively minor, assessing your lost wages will typically be simple. We can get employment records and paystubs to determine your daily pay and multiply that by the number of days you are projected to miss. This also includes the times you needed to take off work to go to doctor appointments or discuss your case with your attorneys.
For those with serious injuries, you might be out of work for a considerable amount of time, if not permanently. Fortunately, you can also claim lost future income and earning capacity in your special damages, such as having to take a lower-paying job or losing out on promotions at your current one.
Lastly, any property damage you suffered in the accident will be included in your claim for special damages.
General Damages
Most people know “general” damages by its common term of “pain and suffering.” These are the non-economic damages you can receive for the physical pain you might have to now live with because of your injuries or the emotional harm you suffered. While these damages cannot usually be easily added up like medical bills, they are no less real than your special damages. Suppose you suffer from anxiety, depression, humiliation, or the loss of enjoyment of life as a result of your injuries. In that case, you should be compensated since you were not at fault for causing those feelings.
These damages are commonly claimed in personal injury cases, so we have a couple of methods to help determine an accurate value for your general damages. One way is to use the “multiplier” method, which assigns a value between 1.5 and 5 to your injuries based on their severity and multiplies that by the amount of special damages you have. That is why it is so important to get immediate and continual medical treatment so an accurate value for your general damages can be derived.
The other approach is the “per diem” method. With this approach, we assign a daily monetary value to your pain and suffering and multiply that by the number of days you are likely to endure physical pain and emotional distress. To prove this, we will still need evidence of your injuries’ severity and their impact on your life, like medical records and documentation from any mental health professionals you visited.
Punitive Damages
The last category of damages you could be awarded is “punitive” damages. They are referred to as “exemplary” damages because they are reserved for cases involving aggravating circumstances, typically meaning that the defendant caused the accident through a willful and wanton disregard for the plaintiff’s safety, according to § 2A:15-5.12(a). The court will also award punitive damages if the accident was caused by gross negligence or actual malice. Thus, they are rarely awarded in a personal injury lawsuit since most are caused by ordinary negligence.
To prove that the other person’s conduct went beyond mere carelessness, you will need to show clear and convincing evidence that they acted in one of the ways just described. The court can consider all relevant evidence to determine if it should grant punitive damages under § 2A:15-5.12(b). This includes, but is not limited to, the likelihood that serious harm would occur because of the defendant’s act at the time of the incident, the defendant’s awareness that their recklessness would cause harm, and their conduct after the act.
Our Hackensack, NJ Personal Injury Lawyers Can Help You Get the Damages You Deserve
For a free case review today with our personal injury attorneys, call Agrapidis & Maroules, P.C., at (201) 777-1111.