When you get hurt in an accident, the damages you receive can pay you back for two major areas of harm: economic and non-economic harm. There are a few differences to be aware of, especially when it comes to calculating these areas of damages.
Economic damages pay you back for economic harms, like vehicle repair bills, medical bills, and lost wages. Non-economic damages pay for intangible experiences the accident caused you, like the physical pain, mental anguish, and emotional distress from the accident, injury, and treatment. Economic damages are calculated by adding them up and projecting future costs. Non-economic damages are chosen based on the severity of your injuries, usually by using some shortcut methods.
Call our Austin, TX personal injury lawyers for help with your case today by dialing Cap City Injury Attorneys at (512) 612-3110.
Types of Damages in a Texas Injury Case
Both economic and non-economic damages are considered “compensatory” damages because they compensate you for the harm you suffered. These damages are based on values you can provide evidence of, whether that be from bills, financial statements, or other records. With non-economic damages, you cannot provide records, but we can show our work by using approved calculation methods.
Compensatory damages are separate from “exemplary” or “punitive” damages, which are not intended to pay you back. Instead, those damages make an example out of the defendant or punish them for their wrongdoing. This effectively puts additional money in your pocket, but the point is to punish them, not to reimburse you.
Economic vs. Non-Economic Damages Defined
As mentioned, compensatory damages pay you back for harm you faced. Some of the harms you faced are monetary, while others are not. For example, medical bills hurt you because they cost you money, while a broken arm hurts you literally.
Economic Damages
Economic damages, as the name implies, account for all harms that have a monetary cost attached from the beginning. You don’t feel physical pain from lost wages or medical bills; the only effect it has on you is a financial one.
Economic damages are also called “pecuniary damages” or “special damages” because of their special/specific value.
Non-Economic Damages
Contrast this with pain itself, mental anguish, emotional distress, grief, etc. These experiences cannot be proven on paper or shown on video, and there are certainly no bills, receipts or financial statements proving the value of these harms.
Since they are non-monetary, we call them non-economic damages. They are also called “general damages” because they flow generally from any injury.
How Damages Are Paid
The goal of compensatory damages, whether economic or non-economic, is to set things right. As much as possible, these damages set you back to the condition you were in before the accident. Both economic and non-economic damages are paid to you as money damages.
Paying you back for your medical bills, for example, resets your financial position to where you were before the accident.
Pain, scars, lost limbs, and other intangible harms cannot be reversed, but you can be paid for them. Although there is no receipt or bill to say what your non-economic damages are worth, we can still put a financial value on these damages.
Non-Economic Damages vs. Pain and Suffering
“Non-economic damages” is the broad category name that includes things like pain, suffering, emotional distress, etc. The names “non-economic damages” and “pain and suffering” essentially mean the same thing, legally speaking.
Our Texas personal injury lawyers may switch up the names to things like “mental anguish” or “emotional distress,” depending on what exactly we are talking about and what point we are trying to make. For example, when discussing the harm from a serious back injury, we might discuss it as pain and suffering. However, if we are focusing on the PTSD effects of a serious car crash, we might say economic damages.
All in all, these words essentially mean the same thing, and any rules apply to these damages equally, whatever you might call them.
Are There Caps on Economic and Non-Economic Damages in Texas?
Texas law has no caps on compensatory damages for things like car accidents, slip and falls, or product liability injuries. This means that for most accidents, you can claim the full value of your case.
However, there are caps on medical malpractice lawsuits. These limit how much you can claim on non-economic damages, and they change depending on how many medical providers are involved in the case.
Exemplary/punitive damages are capped in all cases. This limit is whichever is higher:
- Double the economic damages plus up to $750,000 of non-economic damages, or
- $200,000.
How Are Economic Damages Calculated?
Economic damages come from the bills and receipts showing what you were charged or what you already paid for your injuries. The damages awarded for unpaid bills would be sent out quite quickly to cover those costs, while you keep the rest to pay you back for what you spent.
We can also assess future economic losses, like the cost of ongoing medical care or future lost earnings your new disability will cause you. These can be claimed as long as we can provide reasonable proof that they will exist at the values we claim.
How Are Non-Economic Damages Calculated?
Since there are no bills or receipts to use to calculate non-economic damages, we have to use other methods. There are two common options:
The Multiplier Method
For this, we assess the overall severity of your injury and assign it a number from 1.5 to 5. We then multiply the economic damages by this value.
The Per Diem Method
Alternatively, we can assign a value to how much suffering you face each day and multiply it by the number of days you suffered. We start this value by using your average daily wage, assuming that you essentially deserve to be paid as though the burden of being an injury victim is now your full-time job.
Call Our Personal Injury Attorneys in Texas for Help Today
If you were hurt in an accident, call Cap City Injury Attorneys’ Round Rock, TX personal injury attorneys at (512) 612-3110.