One terrible incident could cause waves and it can lead from one problem to another. A personal injury is not just a personal injury, it is often the beginning of a ball of yarn unraveling and exposing a family to all sorts of issues they could have never predicted. There are two types of damages attained through a personal injury attorney in Spokane Valley, WA: they are referred to as special damages and general damages, and they vary wildly. The more specific terms are compensatory and punitive.
Compensatory Is Measured
Compensatory damages are usually easily measured because they include obvious and dictated expenses involving the personal injury. For example, they are medical expenses directly related to the injury, which could have occurred at work in a slip and fall, in a car accident, etc. All of these include compensation damages that will involve medical treatment. It also includes wages lost from being out of work, something else that is easy to measure for most accident victims.
Punitive Is up for Discussion
Punitive damages are related to the emotional trauma faced from a personal injury; they are usually a special type of compensatory damage that includes mental despair, emotional pain, etc. Punitive damages are directly related to how much the prosecution wants to punish the defendants for their actions. A clear consequence needs to be established, and it should be based on the level of the negligence and the size of the defendant’s finances.
For example, a large company may have committed an act that needs to be punished. $100,000 is nothing to a company of their scale, and they need to be made aware that their incident was harmful. They need to feel that impact, so the punitive damages may come in closer to a few million in a case against them. Punitive damages are designed to confirm that the defendant has felt the consequences of their actions, and they are not always paid out.
A personal injury attorney in Spokane Valley, WA at Jcooney.com can help navigate the complicated layers of the law and determine who is at fault and to what degree they should be held responsible.
