Can You Sue for Pain and Suffering After a Motorcycle Accident in NJ?
Motorcycle crashes are often devastating for victims, causing serious injuries that are not only painful, but emotionally distressing, entitling victims to compensation for pain and suffering in New Jersey.
Lawsuits often include damages that can compensate the victim for harms that go beyond the economic damages they suffered. These damages are often lumped under the title of non-economic damages, which encompass “pain and suffering”. Victims can seek damages for the physical pain they have endured, as well as the mental anguish, emotional distress, or reduced quality of life they have experienced. Pain and suffering is subjective, so it often benefits victims to give personal statements about their struggles when lawsuits go to trial. Jurors may find this compelling, especially when paired with supporting expert witness testimony from mental health professionals, increasing awards for pain and suffering in New Jersey.
For a confidential and free case analysis from our New Jersey motorcycle accident lawyer, call Jerry today at 1-800-529-4464.
When Can You Claim Pain and Suffering After a New Jersey Motorcycle Crash?
Many motorcycle accidents lead to considerable damages for victims. In addition to many accidents involving property damage, motorcycle riders and passengers are often injured in crashes, suffering damages for medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Pain and suffering damages can be claimed in many cases, but there are sometimes limitations.
First, if you file an auto insurance claim for your injuries instead of a lawsuit, you might be unable to get pain and suffering after a motorcycle accident in New Jersey. Compensation in such claims is dictated by the insurance policy that covers the crash. If your insurance has first-party benefits, you might get some damages that way. Otherwise, the claim will be filed as a third-party claim against the at-fault party’s policy. In either case, the insurance policy will likely specifically exclude damages for pain and suffering and other non-economic damages, limiting you to only recover for vehicle damage, medical bills, and lost wages.
However, if you file a motorcycle injury lawsuit in court, you can claim damages for any harms you suffered in the crash, including non-economic damages. When you go to court, not only are pain and suffering damages available, but they may comprise most of your jury award, depending on your financial losses. New Jersey does not place caps on non-economic damages in motorcycle injury lawsuits, so victims can often claim high damages in lawsuits for injuries and accidents because of pain and suffering.
What Counts as “Pain and Suffering” in a New Jersey Motorcycle Accident Lawsuit?
The phrase “pain and suffering” often refers to a wide range of damages. The damages for “pain” can reimburse you for the physical pain you felt and chronic discomfort related to the injury. “Suffering” usually refers to the mental component of an injury: the fear, anguish, and dissatisfaction of an injury and its impact on the victim’s life.
In addition to these damages for physical pain and mental suffering, other intangible damages are often recoverable when victims file motorcycle accident lawsuits. This can include mental anguish, grief, lost quality of life, humiliation, and inconvenience.
Many different aspects of an injury involve intangible harms like these, and they can all add to your damages for pain and suffering. For example, victims who sustain disfiguring facial injuries during motorcycle crashes might experience extreme pain and suffering, incurring a wide range of intangible damages in the process. Lost abilities, lost enjoyment of life, and lost activities you can no longer participate in can also qualify under the umbrella of pain and suffering, contributing to your overall losses and informing the compensation we seek in your case.
When Can You Sue for Mental Anguish After a Motorcycle Crash?
Mental anguish is compensable as non-economic damages after motorcycle accidents in New Jersey. This refers to the mental suffering victims experience while reeling from physical injuries and traumatic accidents.
On the whole, pain and suffering cover the physical pain associated with injuries and the emotional distress often accompanied by them. When seeking compensation for mental anguish specifically, Jerry may submit statements from mental health professionals who have evaluated and diagnosed you with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, or depression after the crash.
Do not downplay your reduced quality of life or the mental anguish you have experienced to your lawyer or the expert witnesses who evaluate you. We can help you consider all the ways the accident has affected you psychologically and socially, as injuries might be isolating and contribute to victims’ depression or reduced enjoyment of life. For example, being unable to return to work and engage with peers after a crash could worsen a victim’s depression and pain and suffering, increasing their deserved compensation.
Permanent injuries tend to cause the most mental anguish for victims in New Jersey. Losing mobility due to paralyzing spinal cord injuries or cognitive functions due to traumatic brain injuries can be especially distressing, as victims’ quality of life might be permanently affected. Victims who speak candidly about their pain and suffering when giving court testimony may convince juries of their deserved compensation, especially when coupled with compelling expert statements.
Calculating Pain and Suffering Damages in New Jersey Motorcycle Accident Cases
In motorcycle accident claims, jurors use subjective factors to assess victims’ deserved non-economic damages for pain and suffering. Unlike other damages, where there are often medical bills, financial statements, and pay stubs that can be used to calculate the damages, pain and suffering damages are based on observations, testimony, and the understanding that those intangible things can translate to monetary payments.
How Jurors Assess Damages
Courts urge jurors to look at the victim’s age, how severe their impairments are, how the injury affects their daily life, how the injury affects their family, how long the injuries will last, and other factors when awarding non-economic damages. This can include looking at future pain and suffering and present and past pain and suffering. To help guide these evaluations, we may have experts testify in court so jurors appreciate the mental anguish you have experienced, as well as any mental health conditions you have been diagnosed with due to the traumatic accident.
Courts rely heavily on the jury for these calculations. Ultimately, it is left to the jurors’ individual understandings of how bad the victim says their suffering is. They can compare this to what they know in their own lives or what they’ve observed in others to come to a final, fair value.
How We Request Damages
Fortunately, a Middletown, NJ motorcycle accident lawyer can help guide these jurors. As part of your case, we will include our own calculation of how much you should claim in pain and suffering. As with any other damages, the victim tells the court how much non-economic damages they require. The jury can use that as a starting place and then adjust up or down depending on how serious they find your injuries to be. Our calculation will often be based on experience and how we have seen other similar cases go, as well as input from mental health professionals who can act as expert witnesses.
Generally speaking, pain and suffering damages are higher for more serious or more disabling injuries. However, pain is present in most injury cases, so that means you can usually still claim damages for minor or moderate injuries, too. Some injuries like whiplash could be long-term injuries but might not cause significant impairment. These damages can still yield substantial damages because of the duration of the pain and suffering.
Your Linden, NJ motorcycle accident lawyer can analyze the factors in your case, look at how severe your injuries are, and help you calculate the damages to claim.
How Long Do You Have to Sue for Pain and Suffering After a New Jersey Motorcycle Crash?
You will only have a set window of time after the accident to file your lawsuit in court or risk being blocked from recovering any damages, let alone for pain and suffering. The deadline is strictly enforced, so do not wait long to contact Jerry after your crash for help.
The statute of limitations for motorcycle injury lawsuits is two years under N.J.S.A. § 2A:14-2(a). While this may seem like ample time to file a claim, victims with serious injuries might be focused on their physical recoveries over their financial ones, causing them to delay their cases. Though this is understandable, it can also be detrimental, and our New Jersey motorcycle accident lawyer, Jerry Friedman, can prioritize your case on your behalf while you are healing from your injuries.
We can immediately preserve crucial evidence proving the at-fault driver’s liability for the crash and your injuries. This will help us lay the foundation for why you deserve non-economic damages. Case preparation takes time, and rushing your lawsuit could leave you unprepared for court, which we can help avoid. While gathering evidence for your case, we will continuously track compensable damages, both economic and non-economic. This will inform the relief we request in your complaint, which could then go on to influence the jury’s award to you.
The longer you wait to file, the more questions might arise about the severity of your injuries and their effect on your life. To avoid these questions and ensure a strong case, do not hesitate to reach out to Jerry about your potential recovery right away.
Call Our New Jersey Motorcycle Accident Attorney for a Free Case Discussion
For help with your case from our New Jersey motorcycle accident lawyer, call Jerry today at 1-800-529-4464.
