Truck Accident Lawyer
Truck accidents are more likely to cause serious injuries than collisions involving two cars. Trucks are massive. The more they weigh, the more damage they do. Airbags and crumple zones protect car occupants, but those protections can be overcome by the forces generated by a truck moving at highway speeds.
Some truck accident injuries cause permanent disabilities. Every disability causes lasting emotional pain, and many are accompanied by ongoing physical pain.
Compensation for Pain and Suffering Caused by Georgia Truck Accidents
Georgia law encourages juries to award compensation that will make truck accident victims whole. A victim is made whole by restoring what the victim lost because of the accident.
The law recognizes that injury victims suffer both financial and nonfinancial losses. Pain and suffering are nonfinancial losses. While compensation cannot remove pain, courts recognize that accident victims can use compensation to offset pain by improving the quality of their lives.
Considering pain and suffering in an award of compensation is, therefore, an appropriate means making accident victims whole. Since living with pain substantially diminishes the ability to enjoy life, compensation for pain and suffering is usually the largest component of settlements and jury verdicts.
Components of Compensation for Georgia Truck Accidents
Truck accident victims should be reimbursed for their medical expenses and the cost of future care, including physical therapy or additional surgeries. Truck accident victims should also be reimbursed for lost wages. If their injuries prevent them from returning to their former employment, they should recover the expense of vocational training and compensation for their lost earning capacity.
Truck accident victims with permanent disabilities will need funds to pay for the cost of coping with those disabilities. Compensation should cover the expense of a caregiver, a wheelchair-accessible van, or the other expenses that disabled victims incur to live a productive life.
The final category of truck accident compensation is pain and suffering. That category covers both physical pain and the emotional suffering that results from a physical injury.
Measuring Pain and Suffering in Georgia Truck Accidents
Past financial losses are easy to measure. Anticipated future losses can be calculated with the help of expert witnesses, including economists and vocational rehabilitation experts.
Pain and suffering, on the other hand, cannot be measured with precision. Different accident victims react to pain in different ways. A back injury might be devastating for one truck accident victim while a similar injury might cause occasional discomfort for another victim.
Emotional pain can be even more harmful than physical pain. Injury victims lose self-esteem when they cannot work. They lose the comfort of companionship when they cannot play sports or go on hunting trips. They lose the opportunity to bond when they cannot lift a child. Depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress are common emotional outcomes of a truck accident.
Truck accident lawyers assemble evidence that will prove an accident victim’s claim for pain and suffering. In some cases, lawyers engage the services of psychologists or other experts to help a jury understand the depth of an accident victim’s suffering. They may also prepare friends and family members to testify at trial about changes they observed in the victim’s personality after the victim’s accident.
In the end, a truck accident lawyer will rely on their experience to determine the appropriate compensation for pain and suffering. Lawyers compare a client’s suffering to the pain and anguish endured by other accident victims. By noting the verdicts returned by local juries in similar cases, accident lawyers are able to advise clients about the compensation they should seek for their pain and emotional distress.
