Who Will Pay?
At the Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices, when we sit down with a client, one of the first questions we get asked is, who will pay for my medical bills?
Or what about my wages from work?
I haven't been able to work.
Who's going to pay for that?
Well, the law allows you to be compensated for a number of different types of damages.
If you've been injured in a personal injury matter through the negligence of a third party, you're entitled to recover for your losses.
Two Categories Of Damages
Your losses generally break down into two categories: what the law calls special damages and general damages.
Special damages are easily thought of as things you have a receipt for.
For example, your medical bills, you have past medical bills, and you have future medical bills.
If your doctors say that you need additional treatment surgeries or care in the future, we have experts that price out what those costs will be down the road so you can recover for those as an item of special damages for past and future medical bills.
You can also recover for your lost wages or loss of future earning capacity or your future wages. Again, these are all things that can be calculated. Sometimes complex calculations and sometimes calculations must be completed by experts, but all things generally break down into dollars and cents.
You have another category of damages called your general damages.
It's not a very descriptive title, but it is what the law here in California describes as general damages.
Everybody else in the real world calls it pain and suffering.
I don't like either of those phrases, general damages or pain and suffering, because it doesn't accurately describe what has happened to you when you've been hurt in a car accident, a slip, and fall, a bicycle accident, a boating accident, or any of the myriad of ways that people get hurt.
A better way to think of that is, what would you have to pay somebody to go through what you've been through?
Most of us, at least older teenagers and adults, have read a help wanted ad at some point in our life, a job ad, and they lay out the description of what the job requires, your physical requirements, how many hours you're going to be working, things of that nature.
Well, imagine somebody who's been hurt in an accident.
If you were to set out the job requirements, if you will, for what their injuries have done to them, they must be willing to go to the hospital, must be willing to have painful and protractive surgeries, extensive rehabilitative therapy, sometimes painful therapy, loss of work, loss of familial relationships.
If you lay all that out in a job description, what would you have to pay somebody to go through that?
Now, the law only compensates you for what you think is fair.
The law compensates for what a reasonable person would consider to be fair.
Contact Us
One of our best traits, one of our specialties here at Arthofer & Tonkin, is being able to share your story, convince the adverse insurance company, its claim representative, or the lawyer for the defendant just how serious the impacts of your matter have been on your life, these are your general damages.
So there are two categories of damages, special damages, things that you have to receipt for.
General damages are things that you don't have to receipt for, your pain and suffering, or the impacts on your life.
At Arthofer & Tonkin, we would welcome the opportunity to be our advocate and your storyteller to make the people who injured you understand just how serious this accident was for you.
Our consultation is free.
Call us today, and we'll sit down with you and discuss these issues in greater detail as they apply to your case.
