A survey published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates that a car accident injury occurs every 10 seconds. Although most car accidents aren’t fatal, they usually result in serious injuries, mental anguish, and emotional distress.
If you get injured in a car accident in New York City, you may qualify for emotional distress compensation. However, before you contact your NYC personal injury lawyer, you need to understand what emotional distress entails.
Understanding Emotional Distress
Compensation for emotional distress is meant to ease your mental suffering after an accident. Understand that the negligence of another party leads to the said accident, which usually results in trauma.
Emotional distress during a car accident includes humiliation, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and torment. However, what qualifies as emotional distress within the law is subjective. People react to different situations in unique ways, making it difficult to quantify the subject.
For example, mental anguish has been known to last for several years after the accident in some individuals. What this means is that you need a qualified personal injury lawyer to prove emotional distress.
Proving Emotional Distress
Before you can get compensation for emotional distress, you need to prove your case in a court of law. The relevant documents that can help you are the doctor’s notes, medical records, and photographs. In some cases, a medical professional may be requested to testify on the psychological effects caused by the car accident.
Some of the factors that will be considered by the jury include the duration, intensity, and underlying cause of your emotional distress. Related bodily injury will also play a massive role in establishing the level of psychological distress that you are experiencing.
During a meeting with your personal injury lawyer, you will need to discuss any psychological symptoms that you might be experiencing openly. Tell your lawyer how the symptoms you exhibit have directly affected your life.
After the meeting, your lawyer will help you determine whether your case qualifies for compensation on the grounds of emotional distress. You will also get a rough estimate of how much you are entitled to get from your claim.
How a Personal Injury Lawyer Can Help You Win
Battling insurance companies is a colossal nightmare, especially when you lack any support. Most of the time, insurance companies don’t take physiological injuries seriously. Many of these companies adopt an attitude of “sorry this happened,” and then go ahead to throw a few thousand dollars to cover physical injuries only.
Insurance companies take advantage of the fact that most people do not file for emotional distress claims after an accident. Although classified as a low-ball tactic, it has proved quite efficient.
What you need is an experienced personal injury lawyer who has the required skills to navigate through the complex process of handling insurance claims. It would help if you had someone who can fight your battles while you take the time to recover after the accident.
How much are you entitled to receive? Determining the value of your emotional distress claim depends on several factors. Understand that there is no set value that you are entitled to receive. As stated earlier, people react to these situations differently.
The value of your claim will depend on the facts brought forward by your lawyer. Since the court also allows compensation for the change in lifestyle after an accident, these can help determine the amount of damages incurred. An experienced lawyer can help you establish a rough estimate by comparing your case to similar cases in the past.
Take note that the amount can also be dictated by whether the accident was partially your fault. The amount of compensation you receive will be reduced proportionally to your degree of fault.
However, since there is no compensation amount set in stone, the sky is truly the limit. Getting a certified lawyer in the first step to ensuring that you get a reasonable amount that is proportional to your emotional distress.
Conclusion
There is no denying that car accidents cause emotional distress. However, if you have been involved in an accident in New York City, you need to find a certified personal injury lawyer to prove your claim. It is only fair that you get compensation for all the emotional distress that you are undergoing as a result of negligence.