You may be wondering how much your settlement worth is especially when you experience getting injured in an accident. In this article, we will discuss which among the different types of personal injuries receives large accident settlements and what the reasons behind those payments are.
The accident settlement you receive always depends on the severity of your injuries. Meaning, the insurance company examines the damage before you can assess your claim. There are two categories for this matter. There’s the soft injury and hard injury.
Soft Injuries
One is the soft injuries where it injures your muscles, tendons, and ligaments. The examples of these soft tissue injuries are sprain ankle, strain neck, or back spasms. This type of injury typically receives a small amount of settlement. That’s because most insurance companies don’t consider these as severe and life-threatening incidence. They categorize it as something temporary where you can still have a chance to get back to your daily life within a few months.
These types of injuries are hard to prove. Some cases are unqualified for medical reports so most of the time it becomes very subjective. It doesn’t mean that victims are not telling the truth about the pain they feel though. It’s just nearly impossible to conclude a medical diagnosis only by word of mouth. Let’s say you suffer from a sudden whiplash in a car accident. There you feel headaches, neck stiffness, dizziness, and fatigue. It’s going to be impossible to prove the symptoms. All insurance companies know this and sometimes use the situation to their advantage.
Hard Injuries
These types of injuries are something that changes a person’s life forever. These are severe cases that cause extreme discomfort and a significant amount of pain, sorrows, and life-long suffering. These injuries receive a large amount of settlement due to its substantial impact on both current and future lifestyle of the victim. Also, these types of hard injuries are easy to document and diagnosed medically, so it gets proven into court. Top examples of hard injuries are head damages. These are long-lasting and sometimes lead to permanent emotional, physical, and mental illness.
The odd thing about head damages though is that it often appears to have less damage at first. Sometimes there are even no traces of cognitive dysfunction at all. However, the sharp and relentless shooting pain starts to appear after a couple of months. It is where the victims thought that the particular incident didn’t affect them but it did. They believed that it’s only a minor thing, but unfortunately experiences symptoms after it slowly begins and appears to get worse over a while. Insurance companies know that head injuries take a while before it gets worst. Therefore, they know it requires expensive and attentive treatments. The more extended companies wait for the settlement, the higher the risk of significant head damage cases such as severe cerebral diagnoses. Thus, it means a higher cost of an injury settlement.
A personal injury settlement is essential, especially if there’s noticeable damage. So before you ask for compensation, always understand how the different types of accidents can become very significant in a claim.