Pain and Suffering Multiplier- How Does it Work?

Pain and suffering are some damages you can recover after a personal injury in California. Although they do not involve a direct loss of money, civil courts award them under non-economic damages, according to the degree of pain or suffering a person has undergone due to the injury. The plaintiff must carefully consider this degree and include a reasonable amount for their suffering or pain in their claim for a judge to award them.

Personal injury attorneys use a pain and suffering multiplier to estimate a reasonable settlement offer for their client's personal injury claims. The multiplier adds up a plaintiff’s economic damages and then uses a multiplier of one to five to estimate the non-economic damages. Determining how much you deserve for your suffering and pain after an injury caused by another person’s negligence is complex and subjective. The results derived from this multiplier and after other considerations are made can form the basis for your claim or negotiating an out-of-court settlement.

Economic and Non-Economic Damages in Personal Injury Matters

A personal injury claim occurs when someone incurs damages due to another person’s negligent acts. The person who suffers a personal injury is usually the plaintiff, and the negligent one is the defendant in the case. The plaintiff files a claim against the defendant in a civil court to recover the damages they incurred in the injury. The plaintiff must provide a detailed account of how the injury occurred, why the alleged defendant must be held accountable for their damages, and the damages they incurred for which they seek compensation. The judge will review the claim and hear and review evidence and testimonies to determine the case if an out-of-court settlement does not work.

There are mainly two types of compensatory damages in a personal injury claim in California:

• Economic damages
• Non-economic damages

Economic damages are the financial losses you incur from an accident. They include medical costs, lost wages, property damages, caregiver service costs, and lost earning ability. You can describe these damages in a specific dollar amount. They also include damages or expenses you pay or the amount you lose due to an accident or injury. You must include the immediate, current, and future financial losses when calculating your economic damages, as long as they are all connected to the injury.

Non-economic damages are losses you incur in an accident or after an injury but do not include direct financial loss. They are general damages and include damages like mental suffering, emotional distress, physical pain, loss of joy or ability to enjoy life, and lost consortium, mainly by the immediate family. There is usually no amount fixed for these damages. The value of a person's non-economic damages in an accident is determined on a case-to-case basis. The court must use reasonable judgment and supporting evidence to determine what a plaintiff deserves regarding noneconomic damages.

Since non-economic damages are generally subjective, it becomes difficult for plaintiffs and lawyers to agree on how much they should include in their claims. Even after suffering so much pain or mental anguish after an accident, it is impossible to tell precisely how much money you deserve as compensation for that suffering or pain. However, since you suffered that way because of another person’s negligent or wrongful acts, you deserve some form of compensation. Thus, working with your personal injury attorney is necessary to determine a reasonable amount for all the noneconomic damages you suffered in an accident.

How To Use a Multiplier to Determine Your Non-Economic Damages

Remember that noneconomic damages do not represent a direct loss of money for a plaintiff. However, you must determine how much compensation you deserve for your pain and suffering and include it on your claim for a court to award all your damages. The multiplier will help you quickly determine what to include in your claim. This is how it works:

• Determine your economic damages. These include all the financial losses you have incurred in the accident, including your current and future medical costs, lost wages, lost earning capacity, and property damage.
• Determine the total of your monetary damages by adding everything you have lost and how much you will lose due to the injury.
• Pick a number for your multiplier between two predetermined numbers, for example, one and five.
• Multiply the total of your monetary damages with the number you have chosen in the step above. This will give you an estimate of how much you deserve in non-economic damages
• Lastly, add the economic damages to the estimated amount of your non-economic damages to determine the value of your claim

How To Choose a Multiplier

When filing for compensation after a personal injury, you will likely want maximum compensation for your damages. This could cause you to choose a higher multiplier when estimating your non-economic damages. However, a move like this can cause problems, especially if you overestimate your non-economic damages. The judge can dismiss your claim as unreasonable or award an even lower amount than you deserve for all your damages. To avoid making this mistake, learn from your attorney how to carefully choose a multiplier.

Typically, the number you choose as your multiplier will affect the outcome of your case. Personal injury attorneys advise plaintiffs to select a number that resonates with how much a personal injury impacted their life. Those who choose the highest multiplier have been significantly affected by the accident. You can have a high multiplier if your injury completely changes your life. However, a lower multiplier is advisable if the injury was moderately severe and you fully recovered after a few weeks or months of treatment. Remember that you will explain to the court how you arrived at the numbers you included in your claim during the hearing.

Here are some of the factors you can consider when determining how severe the accident was or how much it impacted your life:

• How long your full recovery was, or will be
• Your likelihood of making a full recovery from the injury, or if it will leave you with a permanent deformity or disability
• How much you need to adjust your lifestyle due to the accident to live a life close to what you were accustomed to
• If you still enjoy life as you did before the injury
• The nature of your physical injury and if it included dismemberment or disfigurement
• If you can take care of yourself without assistance after the accident
• The nature of your physical injuries, whether minor, mild, or severe

The Settlement Amount Can Change

A pain and suffering multiplier only estimates your claim under noneconomic damages after a personal injury. It does not give you the accurate amount you deserve for your pain, suffering, or emotional distress. Thus, the amount you include in the claim is not necessarily what you will receive during settlement. The amount can change to reflect the exact compensation you deserve. Other factors come into play in determining precisely what you deserve during settlement. Here are some of the factors that can influence the amount you receive for your noneconomic damages:

Your Insurance Coverage

Insurance companies cover most losses or damages that occur in an accident. Thus, your accident could be covered by an insurance company. For example, if you have auto insurance, most accidents involving your vehicle will be covered under that insurance policy. Homeowners or renters also have insurance that covers accidents like dog bites, slips, and falls. It is necessary to understand your insurance policy to know what to claim after a personal injury.

Some insurance policies have caps, limiting a person's compensation in a particular accident. A cap determines the maximum amount you can claim against a specific policy. If you sustain a severe injury and deserve substantial compensation from your insurance provider, your claim can exceed this maximum compensation. When this happens, the insurance provider will only pay the maximum compensation according to your policy, not everything you have included in your claim. This means you have to look for additional funds to cover your damages.

Thus, if the multiplier gives you a higher estimate than your insurance provider can pay, you will likely receive less for noneconomic damages than you claimed.

Additionally, you will recover what you deserve from the liable party if you do not have insurance coverage. You are safe if the responsible party will pay full compensation for your damages. However, there could be a problem if they are unwilling or unable to pay the full compensation in your claim. You have to rely on a court’s decision on the matter.

Shared Fault Laws

Every state has rules for handling personal injury matters, especially where more than one party is responsible for the resulting damages. This, too, can affect the compensation you receive, especially for non-economic damages. In California, there are rules on shared fault, whereby everyone responsible for the accident, including the injured party, must share blame in the personal injury matter. This can reduce the amount you have included in your claim after using a pain and suffering multiplier to determine your non-economic damages.

For example, suppose you slip, fall, and sustain a severe injury due to a slippery or wet floor, but it is determined that you ignored a hazardous sign right before where you fell. In that case, you are partly responsible for your injuries. The liable party in your claim will only pay you according to the percentage of their involvement in your injury. This can leave you with less compensation than you deserve.

There are mainly three categories of shared fault laws you should consider when filing your claim after a personal injury:

• The pure comparative negligence law, whereby each responsible party is assigned a percentage of fault, by which they pay compensation for the resulting damages
• The modified comparative negligence law, whereby your involvement in the accident for which you were injured determines what you receive from the liable party. If your participation in the accident was more than the other party's, you do not receive anything in compensation.
• Contributory negligence law, whereby you do not receive compensation if you are at fault in the accident.

Your skilled personal injury attorney will discuss laws affecting your compensation to prepare you for what to expect.

Your Fault in the Accident

Generally, personal injury claims arise from injuries due to other people’s fault or negligence. However, an injured party can also be partly responsible for your accident, which could change the course of a personal injury matter. For example, if you were in a vehicle accident where another driver was at fault and it was established that you were driving recklessly, you could be partly responsible for your injuries. This means that the other driver will not be held accountable for all your damages because their percentage of fault is not 100%.

In most cases, a judge will only award damages for which the other party is responsible. If it is established that you were 20% to blame for your injuries, the other party will only pay 80% of what you have included in the claim. This will reduce the amount you have determined using the multiplier.

The Problem with the Multiplier and the Alternative

Remember that the pain and suffering multiplier is inaccurate in determining how much compensation you deserve for noneconomic damages after a personal injury. Putting a dollar amount to a person’s suffering, pain, distress, or emotional anguish is impossible. The multiplier only estimates the amount you can receive after a personal injury.

Even so, many people have criticized the way the multiplier works. Here are some of the issues that have been raised regarding it:

• Its subjectivity, especially when chasing a random number for calculating the non-economic damages
• Some people feel that it simplifies a person’s pain or suffering after an accident
• The multiplier is also inconsistent since plaintiffs choose multipliers randomly
• Compensation that seems fair to one person may be unfair to another because similar injuries can significantly impact people differently.
• Some people can easily manipulate or abuse the multiplier to demand more settlements than they deserve.

Skilled personal injury attorneys only use the multiplier to determine the approximate compensation a plaintiff can claim. It gives them an idea of what they can seek in the settlement. Your attorney can consider other factors, including the facts of your case, to come up with the final amounts to include in your claim.

Experienced personal injury attorneys also use other methods to determine what a fair compensation for noneconomic damages would be for a particular plaintiff. For example, the per diem method is widely used in California. This method works differently from the multiplier, but it can help you obtain an estimate, which you can compare with the multiplier’s result to determine what to include in your claim. Here is how it works:

• Start by obtaining a total of all the economic damages
• Assign a daily rate to yourself according to how much you earned daily before the accident. Obtain the total amount for all the days you have suffered after the accident
• Add the economic damages and the daily rate together to obtain the final amount you should claim as compensation from the insurance provider or liable party.

This method does not accurately represent all the non-economic damages a person suffers in an accident. Thus, it has been criticized, mainly for the following reasons:

• The amount obtained through the per diem method is usually lower than what a jury verdict would award
• It is difficult to tell how many days an injury affects your life, especially if the injury is severe and you have to live with it at some point.
• The plaintiff’s income is the main determining factor in this case, which can be fair or unfair, depending on how much you make.

Although the multiplier and per diem approximate non-economic damages in personal injury claims, it is impossible to put an amount to a person’s suffering or pain. Personal injury attorneys only use these formulas to obtain a rough estimate of how much you should include in your compensation. Since both formulas are imperfect, your attorney can compare both results to derive an amount to include in your claim.

Find a Competent Personal Injury Attorney Near Me

Have you or someone you love suffered a personal injury in Los Angeles? You can recover compensation from your insurance provider or the liable party for all your economic and non-economic damages. However, you must determine the value of your damages and include them in your claim to receive the compensation you deserve.

Although it is easy to estimate the economic damages because they have a direct dollar value attached to each damage, you must estimate non-economic damages. Working with a skilled personal injury attorney will ensure you get this right. We use the multiplier and any other method at The LA Personal Injury Law Firm to estimate what you should claim under non-economic damages. We can help you assess your damages and file a successful claim with your insurer or the civil court. Call us at 310-935-0089 for more information about the multiplier and our services.