In assessing the damages you could receive, there is no “average” amount. Damage compensation is largely based on how much damage was done to you, the likelihood of a strong recovery from that damage, and how long symptoms will last if a strong recovery is not forecasted. Medical bills, wages from work, lifetime earnings (if needed), and property damage are all economic damages. In other words, the compensation is determined by adding up the bills (in the case of medical bills), determining what would have been made from wages (either temporarily or in the course of a lifetime), and assessing how much damaged or lost personal property is worth. If you are expected to need care in the future, experts in the field can give testimony on what the care should be. For example, if you broke both legs in such a way that multiple surgeries are needed, a physician in the field could testify to the advised course of treatment. Then, a separate set of experts give testimony on the estimated expense of the future treatment, to arrive at a damage compensation figure. If you are expected to need time off work in the future, the expert testimony is also used to forecast the amount of time similar victims have needed to recover. So for economic damages, for example, your damage compensation might look like this:
$3,000 in medical bills currently
$4,000 in medical bills expected in the future
$3,000 in lost wages from work
$3,000 in lost wages from work expected in the future
$2,000 in property damage
These add up to $15,000 in economic damages. Pain and suffering, whether physical, emotional, or mental, is a non-economic category. Courts cannot quantify pain and suffering in the same way that one can quantify how much an emergency room charged you. Contacting an attorney like those at Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA can help you calculate the noneconomic damages you could pursue—and keep the insurance company from lowballing you for them.