The ultimate goal of a personal injury lawsuit is to make injured victims whole again. In theory, the law would like to allow people who suffer injuries to collect full compensation for all of the physical, economic, and emotional harms that an accident imposes on them. Of course, doing this has practical difficulties, such as accurately measuring emotional harms. Still, the fact that full compensation is the goal of the law is helpful for people’s understanding of what damages are available to them when working with a Virginia Beach truck accident lawyer.
What Damages Are Available
The law makes a wide variety of damages available to injured parties. One of the most straightforward ones to understand is economic damages. These are damages related to specific, easily calculated harms that a person suffered as a result of an accident. For instance, in a case arising out of a car accident, a person could receive special compensatory damages from the person who caused the accident to cover their medical bills and the repair bills for their car. The damages can also work based on prospective harms. For instance, if a victim can prove that their injuries prevented them from returning to work or lowered their ability to earn money, they can also recover from those losses.
Courts can also award victims non-economic damages. Rather than being tied to specific, calculable harms, non-economic damages are supposed to compensate victims for the emotional harms that they suffer. Theoretically, these damages should be related to a person’s pain and suffering, but as a practical matter, they tend to be related to the special compensatory damages that a jury awards.
Additionally, courts have the option of awarding punitive damages. These are a special class of damages that are rarely given out. Rather than the other types of damages, which focus on ensuring that victims are paid back for the harm they suffered, punitive damages exist to punish the defendant. The idea is that courts may impose these extra damages to punish defendants for particularly heinous conduct.
Contact Our Personal Injury Law Firm Today
If you or a loved one has suffered injuries in an accident caused by another party’s negligent or reckless actions, contact a Virginia Beach truck accident attorney from Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp to find out what legal recourse you may have. It is critical to remember that Virginia has placed a statute of limitation on how long victims have to file a personal injury lawsuit against those responsible for their injuries, so do not delay. Failure to file before that legal deadline could mean you lose any chance of ever filing your claim or getting justice against the person responsible for you or your loved one’s injuries.
Our personal injury law firm has successfully represented many clients and their families who have suffered terrible losses, like the $225,000 settlement we obtained for one client who could no longer work in her chosen career after a tractor-trailer driver smashed into her vehicle twice.