When you sustain a serious injury from a slip and fall caused by a landowner’s negligent failure to maintain their property in a safe condition, you may be dealing with significant financial, physical, and personal losses as a result. All of those losses can and should be factored into a civil claim against that negligent landowner, but understanding exactly what you can recover for can be trickier in practice than you might expect.
Assessing damages in Phoenix, AZ slip and fall claims can be an objective process in some ways and extremely subjective in others, and in both respects, guidance from a seasoned slip and fall attorney is crucial to maximizing the settlement or court award you ultimately receive. Here is a brief primer on how damages generally work in cases like this, as well as what factors may determine what value your specific claim may have.
Understanding “Economic” and “Non-Economic” Losses
“Compensatory” damages in a Phoenix slip and fall claim—in other words, money meant to directly “compensate” someone for specific losses they have sustained due to someone else’s negligence—can be divided into two broad categories, each of which is assessed in different ways. Economic damages are fairly straightforward, as they are the quantitative financial losses and expenses that can be traced directly back to an injury, like medical bills and lost work income. Calculating these damages is often as simple as adding up the numbers established through objective evidence like receipts and pay stubs.
Where things get much more complicated, though, is with “non-economic” damages, or damages that can only be defined in qualitative terms based on an injured person’s unique experiences. These are sometimes alternatively referred to as “pain and suffering damages” since they often center around physical pain and suffering from injuries, but they can also include things like emotional anguish, psychological trauma, lost consortium, and a loss of overall enjoyment or quality of life. These things do not have receipts or any other objective evidence to determine what their financial value should be.
Estimating the Value of Subjective and Long-Term Losses
There are a few different methods that courts and legal professionals can use to decide on what a fair value for non-economic damages in a Phoenix slip and fall case should be, but the most common is to calculate them in direct relation to economic damages. For example, an injured person might ask for the value of economic damages times a specific multiplier as compensation for non-economic harm, or they might demand money based on the assumption that a day’s worth of non-economic suffering is roughly equal to a day’s worth of income they would receive from their job.
Along the same lines, it can also be important to identify expected future losses—most notably, expenses for future medical, rehabilitative, and disability management care. This is because there are strict filing deadlines for slip and fall lawsuits that very often fall before the full scope of losses caused by the accident in question becomes clear.
Let Our Phoenix, AZ Attorneys Help You With Assessing Slip and Fall Claim Damages
The main takeaway you should have from all of this is that damages for a personal injury will generally vary significantly from case to case, and there is no single formula used to calculate them. That said, guidance and representation from experienced legal counsel can go a long way towards making sure your case ends with you getting the most money possible—and more importantly, all of the money you need for your specific damages.
Our team could answer any additional questions you have about assessing damages in Phoenix, AZ slip and fall claims during a confidential consultation. Call today to schedule yours with a trusted advocate who has been serving the area for over three decades.
