Personal injuries from accidents, such as car accidents, can cause serious disruptions in your life.
Knee injuries from car accidents can prevent you from walking your dog or playing with your children.
If you played sports before the injury, you might never be able to do so again.
An average settlement for a knee injury takes into consideration the complete picture of the accident—your quality of life before and after the accident, the severity of the injury, and the negative impact it has on your daily life.
How Do You Calculate the Average Settlement for a Knee Injury?
You can find a knee injury settlement calculator online, but the truth is there’s no guarantee that they are accurate.
One of the factors the parties consider is what the plaintiff might recover if the case goes to trial. Laws vary greatly from state to state.
The amount and type of damages available in a car accident knee injury settlement in each state are far from uniform.
For example, state law may place a cap on overall or a specific subset of damages.
Damage caps do not necessarily preclude a plaintiff from recovering damages that meet or exceed the state maximum.
That said, such caps can create an uphill battle for the plaintiff.
After all, if a plaintiff is unlikely to recover an amount exceeding the maximum at trial, they’ll have a hard time convincing the defendant to pay the excess voluntarily in a settlement agreement.
Calculating Damages in a Knee Injury Settlement Case
So, with that in mind, how do you estimate damages? First, there are three different types of damages: economic, non-economic, and punitive.
Any knee injury settlement average contemplates each of these types of damages, even if the plaintiff does not end up receiving all three types.
Calculating Economic Damages
Economic damages compensate victims for the financial losses of an accident and injury. These are tangible losses easily quantified by adding up receipts, invoices, and pay stubs.
They include:
- Lost wages;
- Future lost wages;
- Loss of earning capacity;
- Medical expenses;
- Transportation to and from accident-related appointments;
- Future medical costs;
- Accident-related home modifications;
- Medical devices; and
- Prescription medication.
Calculating economic damages in a knee injury settlement involves adding together these current and future costs.
If your knee injury requires long-term rehabilitation, a physician can provide a sworn statement or medical opinion to support this.
Calculating Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are harder to quantify but are significant nonetheless. They encompass the subjective and less tangible costs of an accident and knee injury.
Compensation for non-economic damages includes:
- Pain and suffering;
- Permanent disfigurement;
- Loss of quality of life;
- Loss of enjoyment of life;
- Loss of a relationship;
- Emotional distress; and
- Loss of consortium.
When calculating non-economic damages, factors that the insurance company, the court, and the parties consider include:
- The severity of the injury;
- The likelihood that the victim will fully recover;
- The victim’s age;
- The conduct of the at-fault party;
- The circumstances of the accident;
- The damage award that the victim might receive if they went to trial;
- The ability of the victim to return to work; and
- The ability of the victim to engage in activities they enjoyed pre-injury.
There are two primary ways to calculate non-economic damages: the multiplier method and the per diem method.
Multiplier
Using the multiplier method, you multiply your economic damages by a multiplier. A multiplier is typically a number between 1.5 and 5.
For serious knee injuries, a higher multiplier may be appropriate, whereas less serious injuries warrant a lower multiplier.
The factors noted above will guide the back and forth between the parties during knee injury settlement negotiations.
Per Diem
Per diem means per day. So for the per diem method, the idea is to demand a certain dollar amount for every day you have to suffer from the pain of the injury.
Justifying the amount can be tricky, and the court will typically base it on your daily earnings.
Then, you multiply your average daily wages by the amount of time you suffer from the injury.
The idea behind this method is that the pain you feel correlates to the pain of having to go to work injured.
Calculating Punitive Damages
Punitive damages serve to penalize the wrongdoer and deter future similar bad acts. Rarely awarded, punitive damages are appropriate if the wrongdoer acted intentionally, egregiously, or recklessly.
When imposed, calculating punitive damages might involve looking at the factors described above.
In addition, the parties may assign punitive damages proportionate to the wealth of the defendant.
In other words, they would award punitive damages in an amount that would cause the defendant to “hurt” financially.
Since all defendants are in different financial situations, the amount can vary greatly.
State law may provide a baseline for punitive damages, which can also guide the parties in determining the amount of punitive damages that are appropriate.
Injury Wallet Matches Plaintiffs to a Reputable Pre-Settlement Loan Advance Lender
At Injury Wallet, we help people find the needle in the haystack when it comes to legitimate lawsuit loan providers.
We do the heavy lifting for our clients, beginning with our patented lawsuit loan questionnaire.
By answering a few questions, you provide us with valuable information about your case and situation. From there, we get right down to business.
We scour through to find the best lawsuit loan offer from our repertoire of reputable lenders. When we find suitable matches for you, we provide you with the results.
Then you can shop with confidence, knowing that we’ve put in the work to vet the lawsuit lender.
We help ensure that you’re only getting the best offers from credible lawsuit lenders you can trust.
Give us a call today at 866-985-0472, or contact us online to get started.
