Being injured in a serious accident is an unsettling, often terrifying, experience. You may be uncertain what to do next or where to turn for help. In addition, you’re trying to cope with physical pain, as well as financial loss as a result of damaged property, medical bills, and possibly lost time at work. In a personal injury lawsuit, your remedy for pain, suffering, and financial loss is suing the responsible parties for fair compensation. Our office has never once represented a client who would not rather go back in time and regain their health and the health of their loved ones rather than pursue monetary compensation in court. Unfortunately, that just isn’t possible, and so the best we can do is to hold responsible those people and companies whose poor choices resulted in your harm.

If you’ve been injured, it’s important to know to which personal injury damages you may be entitled as the result of a settlement or trial. It is equally important to know, from the very beginning, what measures you can take now that will help you to recover those damages later. The goal of this article is to help you become familiar with the most commonly recovered damages in personal injury cases, as well as the steps you should be taking right now if you are the victim of an auto or motorcycle accident, medical malpractice, dangerous property condition, or defective product.

Take the Right Steps, Right Now

In personal injury cases, it’s impossible to overstress the importance of documenting your injuries. Your attorney will be able to advise you on what documentation is essential for the type of injury you’ve suffered. Right away, you will want to take clear, high-quality photographs of bruising, cuts, burns, or any superficial damage before it heals. Without these photographs, we miss out on an opportunity to show a jury something that words on a page just cannot communicate: how you looked and felt immediately following the injurious actions of the defendants.

In addition, keep a journal of how the injuries have affected your ability to function in everyday life. This journal is both a reference and potential evidence. Months from now, you may have a hard time recollecting that the week after the accident you could not hold a pen in your right hand, or that your elbow experienced sharp twinges of pain when stretched. Even if you think you will remember every detail of what you are going through, keeping a journal can substantiate and prove your pain and suffering at trial. It is an important opportunity to prove and validate the harm that you have suffered.

Getting paperwork from your employer showing missed work, and from your doctors for any hospital or physician visits, is another way to carefully document the impact that your injuries have had on your life. Every time your life is disrupted as a direct result of the defendants’ actions, document it in some way—either in the journal or by third-party documentation—so that it can be used as evidence. This will maximize your chance to be fairly compensated for your injuries.

Types of Damages

There are many specific reasons that Texas courts and juries will award you monetary damages for a personal injury case. The most obvious is for physical reasons, such as past and future pain and suffering as a result of your injuries. If your injuries resulted in disfigurement, even to parts of your body that are normally covered by clothing, a jury can award you compensation for that as well. Sadly, sometimes injuries result in longer-lasting harm that impairs the victim’s ability to perform physical tasks. This could be something like restricted movement in an arm or a leg, or more drastic, such as an inability to walk or to physically care for oneself without help. Whether it is a large impairment or a small one, Texas law provides that you may be compensated for it separately from your pain and suffering.

If you missed work or lost your job as a result of your injuries, you deserve to be compensated for that as well. Lost wages and loss of future earning capacity are additional ways that a personal injury attorney can seek damages on your behalf. Proving these damages requires carefully documented evidence, which is why keeping records through your journal and your physician’s and employer’s documentation is so important.

A third significant category is medical bills, both past and future. Any injuries you have received medical treatment for will result in bills for which the defendants may be liable, either at trial or as part of a settlement in your favor. At Mejias Lindsay PLLC, we are meticulous about collecting all medical bills and records pertaining to your injuries so that you do not lose out on a dime of fair reimbursement. In addition to all of these categories, there are additional and less common damages that may be available to you depending upon the unique circumstances of your case. Call our office today, and our attorneys will guide you through an understanding of what you can do right now, and what we can do together, to get you the compensation you deserve.