After claiming for a personal injury case, you may wonder what you are getting as a settlement. The settlement will depend on the damages or the injuries that you had from that accident. Some accident ends with major injuries and damages, and some end up with minor and small damages.
But when the compensation is concerned, the insurance company will try to provide you financial support. In most cases, the insurance company will try their best to minimize the settlement amount. In such cases, you may need to negotiate compensation with the insurance company.
This writing will discuss how you can negotiate pain and suffering compensation with the insurance company. So keep reading!
Definition of pain and suffering
After an accident, it is quite obvious to have some kinds of pain and suffering. There are mainly two types of pain and suffering. One is physical pain and suffering.
For example, when you will have a broken arm or bone and any physical injury. In such cases, these kinds of pain and suffering are easy to determine.
Because when you have physical injuries, you may need to go through some medical treatment and so on. So it is easy for you to prove to the insurance company about your pain and suffering.
On the other hand, when the pain and suffering are involved with mental traumas and strains. Mental injuries are not visible to our eyes. So the mental pain and suffering caused by accident are not that easy to prove in court. But there are some factors by which you can easily determine the value of your mental pain and suffering. A personal injury lawyer also can help you in this regard.
Pain and suffering compensation
In the first place, pain and suffering settlement deals with some factors. For example, if you go for medical treatment after the accident or the injuries were too minor. If you go for a doctor’s assistance, then the doctor fees, hospital expenses, and all the costs are evaluated in the settlement claim.
If you have any kinds of mental injuries like mental stress, frustration, and so on, you need to determine the value of your pain and suffering to compensate for it. Also, when you are involved in such an injury that caused you permanent disability.
In such a case, the compensation will include your future loss of income and future medical bills. When you experience such pain and suffering, you need to somehow prove to your insurance company about your circumstance, for this issue get connected with a lawyer, contact now. In general, the more serious your damage is, the more compensation you will obtain.
Pain and suffering claim
In order to obtain compensation for a pain and suffering case, you may need to claim for a pain and suffering settlement. In that case, you need to go through some legal procedures and court paperwork for filing a claim. The first thing you need to do is collect as many documents and evidence from the incident as possible.
Then collect the police report from the incident. You may need to have a hospital bill receipt and doctor’s reports to file a pain and suffering claim. When you are prepared with all of your documents and paper, then you need to fill up a settlement claim application to the insurance company.
Negotiate pain and suffering compensation with insurance
When you are done with all of your legal procedures and paperwork, then the insurance company should give you a settlement amount as compensation. But in most cases, the insurance company tries to minimize the settlement amount as possible. Because they always look for their business profit.
For that reason, they will show you their business policies and strategies for that. That is why a personal injury lawyer can help you to negotiate with them. But sometimes, you can also negotiate with the insurance company if you are well-known about their policies and strategies. Or you may follow the following tips.
Estimate your pain and sufferings
The first thing you need to do is, you can make an estimate of your damages when you have the hospital bills and doctor fees. You will have a clear idea about the expenses. So try to estimate those expenses, including future costs.
When you will know about your lost income and mental traumas that you had to go through. It would be easier for you to negotiate with the insurance company when you have all the evidence of hospital reports and bills. You can easily show them those reports and can claim a good amount of settlement.
Collect all the necessary evidence
This is the most important part of claiming for a personal injury settlement. Because, when you will have the evidence from the scene and incident. You will back you up in front of the insurance company. Try to collect the police report from the incident and take pictures of your damages.
Try to support your claim
It is also very important to support your claim. Sometimes, you may be tricked by the insurance policy or the strategies. But when you have something that will support your claim, you can easily negotiate with the insurance company. Certain things can support your claim.
Those things can include information about the other driver, whether he was drunk or not. And the police report also helps a lot. If the police report says that you were the victim, it will be enough to support your settlement claim. After all, these things will help you get a good amount of settlement from the insurance company.
Describe the emotional impact of the accident
When an insurer or adjuster will try to determine the value of your pain and suffering from the accident, you need to tell them the vivid and true story that you were gone through. You need to make them understand that you had a bad emotional impact from the accident.
If that is your case, then there is more chance to get a good amount of settlement. Your emotional impact can be included mental traumas, insomnia, any kind of pain, disability to move, and so on. When the damages are visible, you can easily show them what the case was. And then you can easily negotiate with the insurer.
Get help from professional
If all these above steps seem very complicated to you, you can seek help from a professional injury lawyer. No matter what your case is, what the situation is, a personal injury lawyer can always help you to get the maximum amount of settlement from the insurance company?
An experienced and skilled lawyer is most likely well-educated and well-known about all insurance companies’ legal laws and policies. So when you get assistance from a professional, they will negotiate with the insurance company on behalf of you.
Average pain and suffering settlements
When you claim for a pain and suffering settlement, the insurance company will offer you the compensation to recover from your damages, you may check the statistics here. The compensation for pain and suffering will be determined by the damages and injuries that you had.
As we have known, that the more severe damages are, the more compensation you will get. In general, all accident cases will not be the same. So the compensation amount also will vary depending on the circumstance. But you can easily estimate the value of your damages and injuries.
In Canada, the range of average pain and suffering settlement is $50,000-$80,000. This amount can vary because if you have damages like permanent disability or brain injury. In that case, you are most likely going to have the maximum amount of it. Again, the settlement can be more or less than the average amount.
How much money can you sue for pain and suffering?
Usually, pain and suffering refer to either mental suffering or physical injury. In some cases, mental stress is far bigger than bodily injury. The hard part is, mental injuries are tough to show. That is why determining the value of mental suffering is also difficult to compare to physical pain.
Sometimes, the mental injury can go up to brain traumas, which can make a person paralyzed. In that case, you can sue for the maximum amount of settlement possible. If the injury is involved with physical pain, you may sometimes need to negotiate with the settlement amount.
The Bottom Line
No matter what your accident case is, you can claim for a settlement and prove that you are the victim. However, you will definitely have a settlement amount from the insurance company. So if you think your cases or damages deserve millions of dollars, you may need to negotiate with the insurance company.
If you do not know how to do it, you can hire a professional personal injury lawyer to assist you. A personal injury lawyer will make sure the maximum amount of settlement that you deserve. Hopefully, this writing helped you to understand how to negotiate pain and suffering compensation with insurance.
