Non-Economic Damages in Chattanooga Nursing Home Abuse Cases
A person who has suffered non-economic damages needs a lawyer because the amount of non-economic damages a person could be awarded is open to interpretation. An individual wants somebody who could prove and persuade a jury that the non-economic damages in Chattanooga nursing home abuse cases are severe and should be compensated with a large award.
Differences Between Economic and Non-Economic Losses
Economic losses, also referred to as damages, are damages that come with a specific number attached before a trial. A medical bill has a specific and unquestionable number that the jury has nothing to do with. It comes from the hospital or from the medical provider and does not require speculation. If a person misses a month from work, they missed a certain amount of income. That income comes with a monetary amount which would also qualify as an economic loss.
If a person is going to need treatment in the future, if they are going to need future medicine or future medical procedures, those medicines and medical procedures have a certain projected cost associated with them, so those would equally constitute as economic damages.
Other damages that do not come with a specific monetary amount attached are non-economic damages. Non-economic damages include pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, lost opportunity, humiliation, pain, and other losses of that nature. These losses require a degree of speculative assessment because they are not concrete. Therefore, these losses are harder for a jury to ascribe a “correct” value to.
The Importance of Compensatory Non-Economic Awards
Non-economic damages are important because the experience of an injury, the actual pain, the fear of an injury, the worry about whether victims might ever get better, or whether their lives might ever be normal again are valid damages even though no monetary amount can be attached. When people have an aging loved one in a medical facility and that medical facility provides poor care or abuses that person, it often causes tremendous anger and frustration.
This mental experience, this personal experience, of these types of injuries are far greater. They are far worse than the amount the medical care actually costs. Putting a monetary amount on that suffering, while not able to replace the event, could help with compensating victims who have suffered.
Limits to Monetary Awards for Non-Economic Losses in Chattanooga
In Chattanooga, non-economic damages are capped at $750,000, so no matter how bad a victim’s injuries, no matter how much pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life he or she has suffered, the most that victim could ever receive for non-economic damages in Chattanooga under current law is $750,000.
Economic damages, on the other hand, are not capped, so if an individual were to lose income in the future because of an injury, if he or she has medical treatment costs in the future, no matter how much that is, and no matter how long it lasts, there is no limit to that recoverable amount.
How Experienced Attorneys Avoid Non-Economic Limits in Chattanooga
Lawyers have several strategies of dealing with non-economic damages caps. One of the ways they do that is by attacking the constitutionality of the non-economic damages cap. Recently, attorneys have banded with other lawyers to create an appellate case that may go up to the Tennessee Supreme Court and ask the Supreme Court to declare that cap unconstitutional, which would remove it altogether.
Other things Chattanooga lawyers do is find ways to make sure the economic damages, especially, the future economic damages, offset the cap on non-economic damages.
Reach out to a Caring Lawyer Today
When we suffer because a nursing home harms our loved ones, both victims in the nursing home and families who have to endure could file a claim for their losses. However, non-economic damages in Chattanooga nursing home abuses cases are often difficult to quantify because they do not come with a concrete number. Because of this, it is critical that you contact a legal representative who could represent your loved one and convey to a jury the amount of suffering someone has unjustly endured.
