Understanding Noneconomic Damages in New Jersey Personal Injury Lawsuits
Attention-grabbing headlines in newspapers have been around since before websites started publishing news online. They were the closest thing to clickbait before clicking became a means of accessing the news. Some of these headlines tell of courts awarding millions of dollars to plaintiffs in personal injury cases. You might think that an award of $4 million to an individual is an obscene amount of money, but these headlines do not tell the whole story. The number in the headline is the sum of several amounts that the court awarded the defendant to pay. If the defendant is a corporation, some of the money might be punitive damages. Individuals who commit acts of negligence so egregious that they cause death or severe injury get criminal charges, but you cannot send a corporation to prison, so punitive damages are the closest thing. Second, the award probably includes economic and noneconomic damages. As the name suggests, noneconomic damages are less straightforward to calculate than economic damages. For help deciding how much compensation to request in an insurance claim or lawsuit arising from an accidental injury, contact a auto accident lawyer.
What Is the Difference Between Economic and Noneconomic Damages?
In personal injury law, damages are the money paid by the defendant to the plaintiff as part of a lawsuit judgment or settlement agreement. Economic damages are reimbursement for the financial losses the plaintiff incurred because of the defendant’s negligence; in personal injury cases, the negligence consists of causing an accident or failing to remedy dangerous conditions on premises for which the defendant was legally responsible. The economic damages can include past and future medical expenses and past and future lost income related to the accidental injuries. If the injury caused permanent disability, the economic damages alone can add up to hundreds and thousands of dollars.
Noneconomic damages compensate the plaintiff for losses that do not have a dollar value, such as pain and suffering and the loss of ability to live independently. The courts sometimes use the terms general and specific damages as synonyms for noneconomic and economic damages, respectively. They sometimes calculate noneconomic damages as a percentage or multiple of the dollar amount of the plaintiff’s medical expenses. The more severe the injury, the greater the economic damages.
How Serious Does an Injury Have to Be to Warrant Noneconomic Damages?
Not everyone who files a personal injury lawsuit requests or receives noneconomic damages. Sometimes plaintiffs request economic damages only, either because their medical expenses exceed the policy limits of the relevant insurance policies or because the insurance companies refused to pay an adequate settlement. If the defendant is a public entity such as a city or county, you cannot get noneconomic damages unless the injury involves permanent loss of function of a body part and the medical expenses exceed $3,600.
Contact Monaco Law About Car Accidents
Contact Monaco Law PC in Marlton, New Jersey and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to discuss your accident case. Joseph Monaco is a New Jersey and Pennsylvania personal injury lawyer serving Atlantic County, Bucks County, Burlington County, Cape May County, Camden County, Chester County, Cumberland County, Delaware County, Gloucester County, Mercer County, Middlesex County, Monroe County, Montgomery County, Philadelphia, Ocean County, Salem County, Susquehanna County and all of New Jersey.
Source:
njcourts.gov/sites/default/files/charges/8.70.pdf
