Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Sandor
(Post 8542400)
I would be VERY curious see the case examples of where over 3 million was paid out.
I would like to think that one would have to be excessively negligent and cause excessive amounts of harm to someone in order to justify a 3million+ ruling. |
You don't have to be "excessively" negligent. How it works is that each incident is claimable against your insurance. So if you were involved in an accident (your fault) with a car with one occupant who, for example, is a retired person, no income, minor injuries, etc... then no big deal.
However, if you're involved in a bad accident with a bus, and there are multiple claims, each one is claimed against your policy. So if there's 10 people on the bus, each one hurt individually, then each has their own potential claim.
Your typical claim has several claimable areas (also known as heads of damage):
1. General damages (commonly known as "pain and suffering"): These damages are capped at $100,000 in 1978 dollars. In today's dollars, this totals about $335,000. Typically only the most catastrophic cases get even close to this sum.
2. Past wage loss: exactly what it sounds like. If Person X was in an accident and missed a 12 hours of work, then their claim is 12 hours multiplied by their earnings. This can be complicated by situations where they have short term disability benefits, or take holiday time to recuperate, etc, but generally it's pretty straight forward
3. Future income loss: if someone is hurt, and won't be able to do their job any longer, or has a lot of problems doing their job, they are compensated here. This is often one of the biggest claims made. For example, if you hit a young doctor, and they suffered permanent brain damage, their future income loss would be massive.
4. Cost of Future care: If the person requires ongoing care, or any treatment/consultations/investigations to treat their injury, it must be accounted-for as well. Physiotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractic adjustments, medication, etc.
5. Out of pocket expenses: Any expenses that the person paid out since the accident to the date of settlement (or trial). So if they paid $100 a month for massage therapy up until the time of settlement, this gets paid out here. It's kind of like cost of "past" care rather than cost of future care, but it's a bit more complicated than that.
So if you look at the above, there's a lot that gets accounted for. Now multiply that by the number of people on the hypothetical bus. Or maybe it's a family sedan with a couple of kids inside. It can add up. As I said before, most claims don't get that high. But... you never know. It happens.