You slipped and fell, or were involved in an automobile accident, or an aircraft accident, or a motorcycle accident, or medical malpractice, and so on. If you were hurt due to the negligence of another, Lawyers in Anchorage will know that there are multiple types of compensation you may be entitled to. Lawyers in Anchorage will explain to you that economic damages are the most obvious ones. These include your medical bills, property damage, lost time from work, and other amounts that are easily calculable. For example, medical bills are proven by the copies of the bills themselves. Property damage can be the amount it took to repair your car in an auto case or the amount to replace your iPhone in a slip-and-fall, as so on. Lost time from work is simple math—days or hours missed multiplied by your rate of pay. These are the easy ones, but your possible recovery includes other important non-economic losses (otherwise known as “non-economic damages,” too. These include pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium or other non-pecuniary damage. These are all compensable, but the value of each is subjective. As such, effective Lawyers in Anchorage will know how to portray these factors in such a way that you will receive maximum compensation. Pain and suffering will be proven through testimony from you and others. What can you do and not do since the incident that you could before? How much time did you spend in the hospital, in bed, in your home after the accident? Disfigurement is interesting—if a scar is in a place not typically viewed by others, the value of this injury is less. If it is on the face and significant, it could be worth thousands—if not millions—of dollars. Loss of consortium is a claim brought by others as a result of damages they sustained due to services you are unable to provide because of your injuries. These factors range from not being able to help with housework to not being able to offer companionship, including sex. These are some of the damages you can recover. Lawyers in Anchorage will also explain what damages you cannot recover. Punitive damages—that is, monies awarded to punish another for his or her actions—are typically not recoverable in a negligence case such as a car accident or slip-and-fall. As a result of Alaska’s “comparative fault” rules, any award you receive will be reduced by any amount of fault attributed to you. If you are deemed thirty-three (33%) percent at fault in your automobile accident (i.e. you were injured by a drunk driver, but you were rolling through a stop sign), your $300,000 award will be reduced to $200,000. This is a just a brief sampling of monetary recovery and its limits that Alaska law provides. Lawyers in Anchorage you ultimately retain are important because they know these rules and how to effectively deal with them to obtain the best award for your injuries.
