Calculate Damages Empirically
Personal injury attorneys like you aren’t looking to settle. If your client suffered a personal injury, you’ll need to accurately quantify their actual damages to claim fair compensation on their behalf.
Insurance companies and defendants in personal injury cases are quick to downplay how much these damages are worth. As a result, they will often offer your client settlements that come nowhere near compensating the actual scope and value of their injury.
Whether your clients are plaintiffs in car accident lawsuits or medical malpractice cases, AVGI’s personal injury valuation experts can help you calculate damages empirically and recover the damages your client truly deserves.
Calculating Damages The AVGI Way
The traditional way of calculating personal injury compensation is seriously flawed. The multiplier method consistently underestimates the injury’s true scope and life impact and short changes your client as a result.
AVGI’s seasoned valuation experts deeply understand what creates value and specialize in valuing intangible assets, such as pain and suffering, in the context of a personal injury claim. AVGI’s appraisers tailor our original formulas to fit the case’s unique circumstances and can accurately and empirically quantify the past and future economic and non-economic damages to your client.
AVGI’s holistic approach to calculating compensatory damages results in a much more accurate representation of the client’s emotional and physical pain and suffering, often a dramatically higher number than the pain and suffering settlement amounts the insurance company or defendant offers.
The Traditional Way to Calculate Compensatory Damages
The typical formula that insurance companies use to quantify actual damages is
Economic damages + non-economic damages = total compensatory damages.
You first have to quantify each type of damage to make the total calculation.
This category includes tangible assets that were lost, destroyed, or made unavailable due to the injury suffered and actual expenses incurred by the injured party directly related to the injury.
These are dollars and cents expenses easily documented with receipts and totaled with a calculator. However, compensation may also include future expenses, such as future doctor visits, medications, etc., due to the injury. Projecting these future costs on behalf of the injured party can be complex and best handled by valuation experts specializing in this field.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are far more subjective as they cannot be documented with receipts and are more difficult to calculate and fight in civil court for just compensation.
These damages can include
Pain and Suffering
Emotional Distress
Loss of Life Enjoyment
Loss of Consortium
Other Non-Economic Losses
- Loss of limb
- Loss of sense/s (such as taste, sight)
- Disability
- Permanent scarring
- Shortened life expectancy
Because these damages are subjective, the question is how to quantify emotional distress, for example, but also how to prove emotional distress in court. Accurately quantifying and proving these damages is crucial for your client to receive the emotional distress damages due to them. Insurance companies and many lawyers use a crude formula to quantify the value of these damages.
(Total economic damages) x (a factor ranging from 1.5-5, lower for minor injuries and higher for more serious injuries) = non-economic damages
Non-economic Damages Example
So, for a relatively minor injury that incurred total medical expenses and bills of $1500, the non-economic damages for pain and suffering would be calculated
$1500 x 1.5 = $2250
The total amount of compensatory damages the client could hope to recover in this case would be $1500 + $2250 = $3750.
Other Factors in Calculating Compensatory Damages
A fairness opinion is generally delivered late in the negotiation stage when both parties are interested in closing the deal, often just before the board approves the deal and signs the agreement.
As fairness opinions become relevant at later stages of deal negotiations, these reports demand a high level of expertise with a fast turnaround time. Despite extreme time pressures, AVGI never compromises on research, valuation, or report quality and is committed to delivering high-caliber fairness opinions that both parties can rely upon to close a mutually beneficial deal.
AVGI’s personal injury valuations are systematic, empirical, and meticulously documented. Our reports are thorough and made to withstand intense scrutiny and cross-examination in the courtroom. With perhaps millions of compensation dollars at stake for your client, AVGI is the apparent choice for specialized damage calculation.
AVGI also offers expert witness services to seal your airtight case. You can learn more about our litigation support and expert witness services here.
FAQs about Personal Injury Damage Calculation
Compensatory damages are intended to compensate the injured person for the general damages they incurred due to the injury. Punitive damages are intended to punish the defendant for their criminal or negligent behavior and discourage similar wrongful behavior in the future rather than compensate the victim. Punitive damages are most common in a case of wrongful death or homicide and are rare in a personal injury case. The court may order the defendant to pay punitive damages if found guilty of gross negligence, willful intent, or criminal conduct. Punitive damages are not factored into the compensatory damage calculation for a personal injury claim, but if the court awards punitive damages, the victim would receive the monetary award.
AVGI’s seasoned valuation experts specialize in valuing intangible assets, such as pain and suffering, and tailor original formulas to fit the unique circumstances of each case.
By using systematic and empirical methods, we can accurately quantify past and future economic and non-economic damages to provide a much more accurate representation of the client’s emotional and physical pain and suffering. Our thorough and meticulously documented reports are designed to withstand intense scrutiny and cross-examination in the courtroom.
Moreover, AVGI also provides expert witness services to further support the client’s case.