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Insurance companies use a special formula for determining the value of a personal injury case. That formula includes a figure called a multiplier. That multiplier reflects the extent and nature of the victim’s injury.
What are medical damages in a personal injury case?
Those are the costs to the victim for having a given injury assessed and treated. The medical damages should be considered during settlement talks, with the help of Personal Injury Lawyer in Hamilton.
What types of injuries might be claimed by someone that has filed a personal injury claim?
Soft injury: One in which muscle or connective tissue has been affected. The existence of a soft injury can be difficult to prove. For that reason, the insurance company uses a multiplier between 1.5 and 3, when determining the value of a soft injury.
Hard injury: This gets observed by the doctor, by means of an x-ray, or by using testing or imaging studies. It requires either physical repair or an intrusive examination. When a claimant has a hard injury, the insurance company puts a multiplier of 4 or 5 or higher in its formula.
Where in the formula does the multiplier get placed?
The multiplier is one factor. The other factor represents the sum total for all of the victim’s medical expenses. The product of that multiplication gets added to the amount of income lost, as the victim recovered from his or her injury.
Examples of a hard injury
A broken bone and a head injury: The serious nature of this sort of injury can be emphasized by calling attention to any long-term effects. That can push an insurance company to use a larger figure as the multiplier, in its formula.
Dislocation: Usually takes place at a joint or along the backbone.
Tear in internal tissues: This is different from a soft injury, because it can be observed with the proper imaging technique. A soft injury is a sprain or strain.
Wounds: Any opening on the surface of the skin. This qualifies as hard because it can be observed, and because it requires physical repair.
Spinal injury: The nature of the body’s movement, in response to the impact, determines the nature and extent of any injuries along the spinal cord or in the spinal column.
The disruptive effect of an injury
Some problems, such as a broken bone disrupt the patient’s normal life for a given amount of time. Others might force the patient to deal with an entirely new daily routine. That can affect the patient’s mental and emotional state. Those sorts of effects get noted by the insurance company, during consideration of a case’s value. Their existence could force an insurer to increase the size of the multiplier that is used in the standard formula.