An injured victim’s pain and suffering can become evident in that same victim’s physical and emotional stress or level of anxiety. Yet the court needs more than such evidence, it must seek to establish a way for measuring that stress and anxiety.
Questions asked in courtroom:
• How has the injury affected the victim’s life?
• How has the injury affected the victim’s ability to function?
• How has the injury affected the ability of the victim to enjoy and take part in daily activities?
Factors examined by the court:
• The health of the victim prior to the accident.
• The nature of the victim’s injuries
• How are those same injuries affecting the victim at this time?
• How could those specific injuries alter the future of the affected man or woman?
A special consideration in Canada
The government has put a cap on the amount of money that can be awarded to any victim of a motor vehicle accident, if that same person has claimed the need to deal with pain and suffering. The government has capped that award at $364.000. Canadian lawyers have learned how to work around that cap.
What approach do those lawyers use?
That approach seeks to take advantage of the fact that no cap has been placed on the size of any other benefit, among those awarded to victims of a motor vehicle accident. In other words, there is no cap on the size of the reimbursement for medical expenses. Similarly, there is no cap on the size of the award for the loss of wages.
If the efforts to address the pain have involved use of an expensive treatment, that adds to the money requested for repayment of medical costs. If a client’s inability to mitigate the pain has kept him or her from returning to the workplace, the lawyer can seek compensation for loss of wages.
Those illustrations shed some light on the way that a smart attorney can deal with the cap on the benefits for pain and suffering. Of course, the specific cause for the painful symptoms, along with the associated stress or anxiety, needs to be determined. Only then can the lawyers’ approach prove useful. Only then can an injury lawyer in Trenton choose the benefit that has the strongest link to a painful symptom or the client’s feelings of stress or anxiety.
The court is familiar with cause and effect relationships. For that reason, the court can accept the concept that the linkage of pain with its cause can serve as a measurement of a plaintiff’s painful sensations. That acceptance helps the lawyer that needs to measure the exact level of a client’s pain and suffering, in order to obtain some fraction of the capped amount.