How to Prove Pain and Suffering Damages in Florida
The severity of your injuries, required treatment and care, and any temporary or permanent disabilities caused by your injuries will help prove your pain and suffering damages in Florida. Because pain and suffering are, by their very nature, intangible, these damages can be difficult to document or estimate.
The best way to ensure you seek fair compensation for your pain and suffering damages is to work with a Florida personal injury lawyer on your case. They will use their experience with similar cases, expert testimony, knowledge of the insurance industry, and documentation of your injuries to present compelling evidence that supports a fair settlement.
Proving Pain and Suffering Damages on Your Own Can Be Challenging
Without the knowledge and skills of an experienced personal injury lawyer, it can be difficult to accurately estimate and support your demand for fair pain and suffering damages. When significant injuries occur, you will want to work with an experienced attorney who knows how to develop a convincing case for fair compensation.
Law firms have access to many resources that most individuals do not. This includes expert testimony from medical professionals and others who can speak to your prognosis and the intangible losses you endured—and may continue to endure—because of your injuries.
This is not something you should have to worry about. When you hire a lawyer familiar with similar cases, you can focus on healing while your legal team takes care of the rest. Florida personal injury law firms, like ours, provide free consultations and work based on contingency. You will not have any upfront fees and will not pay anything until we secure compensation for you.
Let an Attorney Build a Case to Support Your Pain and Suffering Compensation
To hold the at-fault party accountable for your expenses, losses, and pain and suffering, you need strong evidence that shows:
- They owed you a duty of care.
- They acted negligently and breached that duty.
- This was the cause of your accident.
- You suffered injuries, losses, and intangible damages.
When you trust your case to a personal injury lawyer, they will investigate what happened and gather evidence to document these four things. As a part of this, they will learn as much as possible about your injuries, prognosis, lasting effects, and the impact the accident has had on your life. This step is essential in ensuring they seek fair compensation for your non-economic damages.
They will know how to use what they learned to develop a demand letter and ask the liable party’s insurance company to pay a fair sum based on the case facts. If this does not allow them to negotiate a fair settlement for you, they will litigate the case and fight for justice in court.
When Should I Call a Lawyer About My Case?
Contact a lawyer from our firm to discuss your case as soon as possible. As soon as your injuries allow and you can think clearly, reach out to a legal team familiar with injury accidents in your area. The sooner you hire an attorney to handle your injury case, the sooner they can begin their investigation.
This protects your rights to a fair payout and helps to preserve some types of evidence that could disappear quickly. For example, video of a serious car crash may be available from a local business. However, many record over previous videos every 10-14 days. This gives your attorney very little time to preserve this crucial evidence.
Florida’s statute of limitations generally gives injured parties up to two years to file a lawsuit. However, this is one of the last steps your attorney will take in your case. There are many tasks they must complete first, and many cases never require a lawsuit to recover fair compensation.
Understanding the Recoverable Damages in a Florida Personal Injury Case
When someone suffers injuries and files an insurance claim or civil lawsuit to seek fair compensation, they are generally seeking coverage of two types of damages:
- Economic Damages: Medical care costs, lost income, property damage repair, related expenses, and future financial expenses and losses
- Non-economic Damages: The intangible losses suffered because of the accident and injury, such as physical pain, emotional suffering, mental anguish, scarring and disability, and more
Most personal injury cases seek and recover both of these types of damages. The financial cost of the injury, treatment, and other damages—the economic damages—is often used as a basis for how much pain and suffering the victim endured, although there are other ways your attorney may choose to estimate a fair settlement range for your non-economic damages.
How Much Can You Get for Pain and Suffering in Florida?
Some states have laws that limit the non-economic damages you can recover in a personal injury case. However, Florida does not limit the money you can recover for general pain and suffering in most cases. The only exception is in medical malpractice cases, where there might be a pain and suffering cap that affects your payout.
How much you might recover will depend on the circumstances of your accident, the severity of your injuries, and their lasting effects. In general, those who have more significant injuries with major long-term effects will recover more compensation than those with relatively minor injuries with no lasting concerns. This is true of both economic and non-economic damages.
If you were hurt, your attorney will gather evidence to document your injuries, expenses, and losses. This evidence proves your economic damages, but it is also crucial to support the demand for non-economic damages during settlement negotiations.
Discuss Your Pain and Suffering Damages With Our Florida Legal Team
Meldon Law provides free consultations for those injured in Florida negligence accidents. If you or a loved one suffered an injury, reach out to our team. We can assess your options and explain how we can help you get justice, including seeking fair pain and suffering damages in your case.
Contact us today to get started.
