Actual Accident Damages are required for you to be entitled to recover a money award.

But how do insurance companies pay for headaches?

Accident Damages are probably the easiest element of negligence. I say this because if you are in a car accident, you can simply point at your accident damages and you are done. Damages must occur to either the car and or to you.

Proving damages becomes harder and harder when you wait to report a claim or when you delay going to the doctor. Calling your adjuster and complaining of headaches will not provide documentation of your injury, however if you go into the emergency room, now you have documented damages of your injury, even if you are just getting checked out.

If you have no damages, it does not matter how negligent the other person was. You will be entitled to nothing. So if there is a 1 MPH accident and there is no damage to your bumper, guess what. You will be entitled to nothing.

When we talk about accident damages, we are really taking about compensatory damages. What is this mean? This means that you will be put in the same situation you were just before the accident. That is the objective of tort law. Note the objective is to compensate and NOT to punish the person that caused the accident.

However, this is a rather bad approach to damages. You will NEVER be back in the position you were just before a car accident. Your pain will not go away, your bones will not be the same, and your car will be fixed with used parts (if it is fixable). So what are they compensating then?

The insurance company will try to compensate for the accident damages by making monetary payments for your damages. What damages? There are several types of damages that we can calculate into the equation, but damages are generally divided into two main categories (the easy and the hard one, you will see why), Special and General Damages.

Special Damages

These accident damages encompass recovery of all economic losses and expenses that you have suffered because of the car wreck. The key here is the word EXPENSES. How does the insurance company know what expenses did you have? They will look at receipts and written documents. These damages are easier to calculate because you can add up the damages to your car, the emergency bill, medicine, loss wages, and so on.

In most cases, there is no much of a dispute regarding your emergency bill. After all it is printed right in the bill. The issues become once you have loss wages or loss of business income. If you are self employed or an independent contractor then you are going to have large amounts of data to justify your income.

When the situation get ugly (and when you need an attorney) is if your accident has incapacitated you from future wages. If you are going to lose future income, then you need to account for those losses before you settle your claim.

The majority rule in the United States is to compensate your for your loss wages with BEFORE tax dollars. Most jurisdictions will allow you to keep your accident damages award without taxing you.

So if you do have to calculate future loss wages and future medical care (a nurse, or more chiropractic care), then the insurance carrier will discount those payments to present value. That means that they will take into account for inflation but they will pay you what your award is worth in the future with today dollars, meaning they will discount the interest you would earn until the future day of the settlement.

Special damages are tangible and can in most cases be added. It is more complicated and litigated when we talk about General Damages.

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General Damages

They are call this way because the law assumes that if you were wronged (someone is negligent to you), then this damage generally flow out of their conduct. The most know term for Compensatory General Damages is Pain and Suffering, but this is just one small category with in a bigger one.

General damages are those that we cannot account for. How much is your pain worth? Is a three day headache worth more than one day of knee pain? This are questions that only a jury can answer. This is why the way insurance companies evaluate injury claims is directly related to jury awards in your jurisdictions.

The insurance carrier will try to �buy� your lawsuit for cheaper than if they go in front of a jury. Some adjusters will however try to decrease those payments so they earn a bonus at the end of the year.

So what General Damages are you entitled to?

Pain and Suffering

Loss of Consortium (loss of companionship)

Hedonic damages (reduced quality of life)

Future pain and suffering

Because these categories are hard to evaluate this accident damages usually require a GOOD attorney to protect your interest.

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Even if you can completely justify your accident damages, you should always think about state law. A no fault insurance state can terminate any entailment to a settlement.

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