It can be a big problem to put a value on injuries you sustain when you are unfortunate enough to have an accident. There are a great many items for you to take into account: medical bills for ongoing suffering, doctor's costs, time lost out of work, pain and suffering are just the tip of the iceberg. Insurance companies consider all these things when they decide how much to offer, and finally pay out, for a personal injury claim.
Here's the method employed by insurance companies to determine the value of your personal injury claim.
Figuring out the amount of cash your accident injuries are going to be worth is a critical aspect of any personal injury claim. It is the part of a personal injury claim about which it is hardest to generalize because the size of the sum depends on your individual circumstances This is where we try to provide you with a very basic awareness of how insurance companies work out the value of a personal injury claim.
In order to determine what your personal injury claim is worth, you need to know the things for which you are entitled to compensation for. Generally speaking a person who is responsible for an accident (and consequently her or his liability insurance company) must compensate an injured person for: medical care and related costs; income lost due to the accident; permanent physical disability or disfigurement; loss of family, social and educational experiences; emotional problems (embarrassment, depression or strains on family relationships, stress); damage to property.
When figuring out the value of compensation, it is usually fairly simple to add up the amount of money spent and the amount of money lost. But there is no precise way to put a dollar figure on pain and suffering or on missed experiences and lost opportunities. That's precisely what an insurance company's damages formula is employed for.
At the start of claim negotiations an insurance adjuster adds up the total medical costs related to the injury. These costs are referred to as "medical special damages" or more simply "specials." This becomes the base figure that the adjuster uses to figure out how much to compensate the injured person for pain, suffering, and other general damages.
