The compensation you can claim depends on your total economic, non-economic and punitive damages. Your economic damages are calculated by assessing medical expenses, loss of income and benefits, property damage, and other out-of-pocket expenses.
These economic damages can be significant in the case of a spinal cord injury. According to the Christopher Reeve Foundation, the healthcare costs and living expenses for someone with High Tetraplegia are $1.163,425 in the first year and $202,032 each subsequent year. This does not include loss of income.
There are no caps on recovering economic damages. But in Texas, there are caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice, which cover pain and suffering, emotional pain, the loss of companionship, and loss of consortium. In a medical malpractice claim, the maximum amount of non-economic damages you can get among all defendants is $750,000.
There’s a limit of $200,000 or two times the amount of the economic damages, whichever is larger on punitive damages (also known as exemplary damages).