Do You Need To Suffer A Serious Injury To Get Compensation After Your Accident?

When people are in accidents, some get very seriously and catastrophically injured, and others do not. Some may only get slightly injured, or suffer an injury that isn’t considered to be serious or life altering. That raises the question over whether someone can sue for injuries sustained in an accident, if they have suffered injuries that just “aren’t that bad.”

The short answer is generally yes; so long as you have sustained some impact, and some injury, the severity doesn’t matter; you still have a legal right to sue for compensation for your losses.

The better question is what compensation you can recover for your injuries.

Serious Can be Subjective

It should come as no surprise that the more serious your injuries, the more compensation you can expect to receive from an insurance company in a settlement, or from a jury in trial.

Of course, in many cases, there is debate about what a “serious injury” really is. The Defendant may think that just because you have mild lower back pain, but no real spine damage, that your injury isn’t serious. But to you, you can no longer carry your young child, or play the sport that you used to, or take hikes with your spouse because of your pain, making this “slight” injury much more serious than it appears.

You may consider a ½ inch scar to be almost like no injury at all. But what if that scar was on your face, affecting your appearance? And what if you worked in a field where your appearance mattered?

All of this brings home the point that serious is a subjective matter, and that you have to look at the injury, and how it affects the victim, to truly gauge whether an injury is serious or not, and to evaluate the compensation someone can expect to receive.

Healing

When talking about serious injury, there is also the matter of healing; how serious an injury is sometimes isn’t the same as how much or well someone has healed. Someone can have a very serious, painful and debilitating injury, and then, after weeks or months, have an almost complete recovery.

That person may still be entitled to compensation for the pain, discomfort, or medical procedures they went through—even though they thankfully made an almost complete recovery.

Economic Damages

Remember as well that generally, economic damages are always recoverable, even for injuries that may not be catastrophic or life altering.

So, for example, if you have a “slight” injury, but you did get medical treatment (with medical bills), and you may have missed a few weeks of work, you may be fully healed, with no real physical impairment—but you certainly do have financial losses and bills that you deserve to be compensated for.

In the end, it’s best not to come to your own conclusion about whether your injury is “worth suing for,” or whether your case “has any value.” Get a professional opinion from a qualified personal injury attorney.

Call the West Palm Beach personal injury attorneys at Pike & Lustig today for a free initial evaluation of your case.

Sources:

justia.com/injury/negligence-theory/non-economic-damages/

leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0300-0399/0316/Sections/0316.027.html