How Does a Jury Determine How Much to Award for Pain and Suffering, and How Should My Tampa Auto Accident Attorney Represent Me?

If you were involved in a motorcycle accident or a car accident in the Tampa Bay area, you are entitled to compensation for what is typically called pain and suffering. Pain and suffering is actually only part of what you'd be entitled to assuming that the Tampa car accident caused you a permanent injury. You would also be entitled to compensation for loss of use, inconvenience, mental anguish and loss of the capacity to enjoy life.

There are no set guidelines for how juries determine how much to award for these types of damages. With other aspects of damages in an auto accident trial, the jury is given more specific instructions and the evidence necessary to prove up the damages is clearer. Medical bills, for example, can be submitted to the jury for their consideration. They are told in jury instructions delivered to them by the judge that such medical bills should be paid by the defendants if they were reasonable and necessary. They are instructed to pay for future medical bills that are proven to be needed within a reasonable degree of certainty.

The same is true for lost wages or lost earnings capacity. The jury is given evidence to consider with regard to past wage loss which evidence can include W‐2 forms, income tax payments, and testimony from the client or his employer. For future lost wages, it must be proved that they are reasonably likely to be incurred with a reasonable degree of certainty which can be done by vocational rehab experts and/or medical doctors.

But unlike wage loss and medical bills, there are no guidelines for the jury to consider in reaching an award for pain and suffering. Nonetheless, an experienced car accident trial attorney will offer recommendations to the jury on how to determine an amount to award for pain and suffering for the jury to consider. Without some guidance offered by personal injury attorneys, the jury will have no basis for determining how much to provide.

One way personal injury attorneys in Tampa and other cities that represent car accident victims suggest that juries determine an award for past and future pain and suffering is by analogy. The personal injury attorney will explain to the jury that the way many people in the United States are often compensated is on an hourly basis. Compensating somebody on an hourly basis is a method that can be applied in awarding an amount of money for pain and suffering, if the jury so chooses.

The personal injury attorney will explain that when determining how much someone might get paid the employer must take into account the type of work that needs to be done. More money on an hourly basis will be required for more difficult work. For example, if someone works as a security guard during the day perhaps they’ll be paid minimal wage. But the same job during the graveyard shift may require the employer to pay more money because there will be less people interested in working those more difficult hours.

The experienced car accident attorney might explain to the jury that the car accident plaintiff has been given the job of living with pain and discomfort by the defendant. But that this is a job no one would ask for and no one would willingly accept. It is a job that entails having to suffer with pain for the rest of the plaintiff's life. That this pain is now a constant burden that the plaintiff would love to be able to get rid of but can’t. And so the defendant has forced the plaintiff to take this nasty job and the plaintiff will make the best of it, but that it’s only fair that he be compensated.

The accident attorney will provide the jury with the number of hours that remain in the plaintiff's life based upon official mortality tables. Whether the accident attorney requests only waking hours or will also include some amount of sleeping hours depends in part whether or not the evidence shows that the plaintiff has significant difficulty sleeping through the night and that this difficulty will continue.

The final determination will be how much to award the plaintiff on an hourly basis. Generally, the attorney will make a suggestion, but will otherwise leave the final determination in the hands of the jury. But because juries often will look for some type of direction, the attorney might choose a number and provide the jury final calculations for its consideration based on that number.

How much the attorney actually suggests on an hourly basis in part depends upon the seriousness of the injuries suffered by the plaintiff and the impact of those injuries on the plaintiff's daily life. That impact is brought out during the direct examination of not just the plaintiff, but also their spouse and before and after witnesses. All of these witnesses give testimony about what life was like for the plaintiff before the car accident and what life is like now after. For example, the jury may award a much higher hourly figure if the plaintiff suffers daily pain that disrupts his ability to work and sleep through the night than if the plaintiff is able to deal with the pain well with prescription medication. The jury might also learn from these witnesses those activities that the plaintiff can no longer engage in but received a lot of joy from before the car accident. All these types of things go into the jury's determination of how much to award for pain and suffering and influence the personal injury attorney's decision about how much to ask the jury for an hourly basis.

You can see from this discussion that because there are no guidelines given to a jury in the award of pain and suffering, this area requires the experience of a skilled Tampa auto accident lawyer if there's to be a fair and just award for the pain and suffering a plaintiff will suffer during the course of their life as a result of a Tampa automobile accident. Our law firm has presented many juries with evidence and guidelines for determining pain and suffering. If you would like to discuss more about how we make such presentations of evidence or about our skills as trial lawyers, please feel free to contact Dale Appell.