When you are injured in an accident caused by someone else's negligence, you may be entitled to compensation for your losses. New York law recognizes two primary categories of damages in personal injury cases: economic damages and non-economic damages. Understanding the difference between these categories helps you appreciate the full value of your claim and ensures that no aspect of your losses goes uncompensated.
At Rosenberg & Rodriguez Personal Injury Lawyers, we fight to recover both economic and non-economic damages for accident victims throughout Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Long Island. This guide explains what each category includes and how damages are calculated in New York personal injury cases.
What Are Economic Damages?
Economic damages compensate you for financial losses that can be measured and documented with bills, receipts, pay stubs, and other records. These damages have a specific dollar value that can be calculated based on actual expenses incurred and future costs anticipated.
Medical Expenses
Medical expenses typically form the largest component of economic damages. This category includes all costs associated with treating your injuries, both past and future. Compensable medical expenses include emergency room visits and ambulance transportation, hospital stays and surgical procedures, doctor appointments and specialist consultations, diagnostic tests including X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, prescription medications, physical therapy and rehabilitation, chiropractic care, mental health treatment for accident-related trauma, medical equipment such as wheelchairs, braces, and crutches, and home healthcare services.
Future medical expenses are also recoverable when your injuries require ongoing treatment. If you will need additional surgeries, long-term therapy, or lifetime care, these anticipated costs can be included in your damages. Medical specialists and life care planners may provide testimony estimating these future needs.
Thoroughly documenting your medical treatment is essential. Learn more about the importance of medical documentation after a car accident.
Lost Wages and Income
If your injuries prevent you from working, you can recover compensation for lost wages. This includes income lost during your recovery period as well as sick days and vacation time used for medical appointments or recuperation.
For more serious injuries that affect your long-term ability to work, you may also claim lost earning capacity. This represents the difference between what you could have earned over your working life without the injury and what you can now earn given your limitations. Calculating lost earning capacity often requires testimony from vocational specialists and economists.
Property Damage
When an accident damages or destroys your property, you can recover the cost of repair or replacement. In car accidents, this commonly includes vehicle damage, but it can also cover damaged clothing, electronics, and other personal belongings.
Out-of-Pocket Expenses
Accidents create many incidental expenses beyond medical bills and lost wages. Economic damages include costs for transportation to medical appointments, hiring help for household tasks you cannot perform, home modifications needed due to disabilities, child care expenses while you attend treatment, and any other reasonable expenses caused by your injuries.
Keeping detailed records and receipts for all accident-related expenses strengthens your claim for economic damages.
What Are Non-Economic Damages?
Non-economic damages compensate you for losses that do not have a specific dollar value. These damages address the human impact of your injuries—the pain, suffering, and diminished quality of life that no receipt can document.
Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering encompasses the physical pain caused by your injuries and the discomfort associated with treatment and recovery. This includes acute pain immediately after the accident, chronic pain that persists long-term, pain from surgical procedures and rehabilitation, and discomfort from wearing braces, casts, or other medical devices.
The severity and duration of your pain directly influence the value of this component. Someone who endures years of chronic pain from a back injury will generally recover more than someone whose pain resolves within weeks.
Emotional and Psychological Distress
Accidents often cause psychological harm beyond physical injuries. Compensable emotional distress includes anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), fear of driving or traveling after a car accident, sleep disturbances and nightmares, and emotional trauma from the accident experience.
If you are experiencing psychological symptoms after an accident, seeking treatment from a mental health professional not only helps your recovery but also documents these damages for your claim. Learn more about PTSD after a car crash in NYC.
Loss of Enjoyment of Life
When injuries prevent you from participating in activities you previously enjoyed, you may recover damages for loss of enjoyment of life. This applies when you can no longer play sports, exercise, travel, pursue hobbies, or engage in social activities due to your injuries.
For example, an avid runner who suffers a serious neck injury and can no longer run experiences a real loss that deserves compensation, even though it does not appear on any bill.
Loss of Consortium
Loss of consortium compensates family members—typically spouses—for the loss of companionship, affection, intimacy, and support caused by an injury. When serious injuries change the dynamic of a marriage or prevent a spouse from participating in family life as before, the uninjured spouse may have a separate claim for these losses.
Disfigurement and Scarring
Permanent scarring, disfigurement, or physical changes resulting from an accident warrant additional non-economic damages. The visibility of the scarring, its impact on self-esteem, and any effect on the victim's personal or professional life all factor into this component.
How Damages Are Calculated
Calculating economic damages is relatively straightforward—you add up the documented expenses and projected future costs. Calculating non-economic damages is more complex because these losses do not come with price tags.
Insurance companies and attorneys use various methods to value non-economic damages. Some use a multiplier method, multiplying economic damages by a factor based on injury severity. Others use a per diem approach, assigning a daily value to pain and suffering and multiplying by the number of days affected.
Ultimately, juries have significant discretion in awarding non-economic damages. They consider the nature and severity of injuries, the duration of recovery, the impact on daily life, the credibility of the plaintiff and witnesses, and comparable verdicts in similar cases.
Our guide on how pain and suffering is calculated in New York provides more detail on this process.
Documenting Your Damages
Strong documentation maximizes your recovery for both economic and non-economic damages. For economic damages, save all bills, receipts, and financial records. For non-economic damages, keep a journal documenting your daily pain levels, emotional state, and limitations. Photographs of injuries throughout your recovery also provide powerful evidence.
Working with medical professionals who thoroughly document your condition and prognosis strengthens both categories of damages. Learn more about evidence needed for personal injury claims.
Punitive Damages
In rare cases involving egregious conduct, New York courts may award punitive damages in addition to compensatory damages. Punitive damages are designed to punish defendants for particularly reckless or intentional behavior and deter similar conduct in the future. These damages are not available in typical negligence cases.
Contact a New York Personal Injury Attorney
Accurately valuing and proving your damages requires legal knowledge and experience. The attorneys at Rosenberg & Rodriguez Personal Injury Lawyers fight to recover full compensation for both economic and non-economic losses.
We serve accident victims throughout Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and all of New York. We offer free consultations and work on a contingency fee basis—you pay nothing unless we recover compensation for you.
Contact us today to discuss your case and learn what your claim may be worth.