Ray Hrdlicka - Presentador - Attorneys.Media
What are the types of compensation that they can expect to be, you know, received from a claim?
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County, NY
New York again is a very peculiar state when it comes to issues concerning car accidents, and the answer is different for car accidents as opposed to a premises liability case.
Ray Hrdlicka - Presentador - Attorneys.Media
Really?
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County, NY
Without getting too into the weeds on it, let’s just suffice it to say this, that no fault, meaning your own insurance policy or the policy of the vehicle in which you were injured, that car or the insurance from that car is charged with paying your medical bills up to a certain point until they have a reason to deny it.
Again, something else that we can go into the weeds on, but they have a right to something called an independent medical review and they can send a person off to a doctor if the person is getting, for instance, orthopedic care, they can send this off to a person that would be considered an independent medical examiner, another orthopedic, and that orthopedic may say this person doesn’t need any further medical care, and then they can stop paying for that medical care at that point.
People have to contest it, but again, that’s something that we can go into the weeds with a little bit deeper, maybe in another interview. But for your typical purposes, I think that your question really is, how do you assess daños? I think that’s the question.
So, the way we assess damages, really, it’s like a laundry list of things. What’s the injury is first and foremost. How much pain and suffering is associated with that injury? We may have a range in mind as to what we think that that is worth.
Past lost wages is essential. That’s something that we try to calculate. How much medical expense is associated with the case? Is there a medical lien placed upon the case? Has an insurance company or Medicare or Medicaid placed a lien on the case? That’s something that we’re going to argue as part of your damages.
What are your future lost wages? If you had a work expectancy that you were going to do the same job that you’re doing until you’re 65 years old and you’re 45 years old now and you’re permanently disabled from that job, that’s an awful lot of lost wages that one would need to calculate. That would be something that we would bring into the mix as well.
How has it changed your life? What are the things that you used to do before this accident that you can’t do now? Were you a person that went to the gym every day and now you’re disabled from going to the gym?
Did you play sports? Did you drive a car and maybe now you can’t drive a car? Did you engage in certain activities with children or grandchildren? Things of that nature.
All of these things calculate into what we would determine is somebody’s damages and that would all be part of our claim.
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