I'd like to talk to you about how lawyers and insurance companies evaluate and determine what is a fair value for a case. Now, I can't speak too much about insurance companies other than to tell you that insurance companies - it's a financial evaluation solely and their obligation to their shareholders is to offer and settle cases for as cheap as possible. They do not care about the injured person and all they want to do is settle for less. There's not one insurance company or an insurance company adjuster who goes home and says, "Oh honey, I have such good news. I overpaid an injured person today."
Why do they not do that? Because they'd lose their job. Their job is to underpay. So what is an injury lawyers job to get everything a client is entitled to, to get the full value, if possible, for what the damages were caused.
So, how do you consider, what is full value for any particular injury?
Well, first of all, let me explain. In an injury case, there is no chart. There's no special book that we go to that says this particular injury is entitled to X, that X amount of money, that is workers' compensation and in workers' compensation, there's a whole schedule associated with that. As far as non-work injuries, let me start with the broad strokes.
There's two broad elements of what are properly claimed. One is economic loss. The second is noneconomic loss. I like to describe economic loss as things that come out of your pocket as a result of your injuries or did not get into your pocket as a result of the injuries. For example, medical expenses pharmacy costs, surgical costs purchasing ambulatory devices. All of those things that have come out of your pocket, whether it's in copays or you had to pay directly, that is an economic loss. Frankly, that's quite easy to calculate. We get all of the medical bills and everything that has been paid and we added up an eighth grader can do it.
The second component is of economic loss. Our lost wages. This is the element of what should have gone into your pocket. So lost wages aren't limited to just what the wages are. It's loss of benefits, loss of retirement benefits. Sometimes if you're a union member or there could be union benefits, but everything that should have gone into your, into your pocket, I'll say broadly that's another economic loss. So there too, that is quite easy to calculate because we just get what the benefit structure was, what the wages were.
What about the non-economic loss? Well, the non-economic loss here too, I like to think of it as two separate things. The physical injury that the individual suffered and the catastrophic emotional consequences that flow from the physical injury, what I like to call between the years and behind the eyes, the emotional consequences that flow from being physically injured in the way that anybody has.
And many people say that the emotional damages are as great or even greater than the physical injuries because we can learn how to adjust with pain and modify our gait and get by. But it's awfully difficult sometimes to get through the emotional consequences that flow because it goes directly to our self-esteem and it goes directly to our self identity. And when we identify ourselves as somebody engaging and doing all different physical activities.
While I may not be in pain, but if I can't do the passions in my life of spending time with my family on hikes and doing various physical activities with them, the emotional consequences can be as large, if not larger than the physical injuries that flow from it. Now, once we know what those physical injuries and the emotional consequences are, and we've evaluated and spoken to the physicians, do we, is it likely that there may be future medical expenses of likely that there'll be future surgeries and future degradation in the body as a result of the injury?
We explore this and many other things in this video. How do you put a value on yourself?