Free Pain and Suffering Settlement Calculator
Use this pain and suffering calculator as a tool to estimate settlement payouts. The victim is entitled to compensation for the physical and emotional distress they experienced.
Pain and Suffering Calculator
Use this calculator as a tool to estimate settlement payouts. The victim is entitled to compensation for the physical and emotional distress they experienced
Settlement Estimate
Disclaimer: This calculator is an estimate and not a substitute for legal or financial advice. The value of a claim may vary based on different factors
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How Pain and Suffering Calculators Work
Before filing a lawsuit, it’s helpful to estimate your claim using a pain and suffering calculator.
What is Pain and Suffering?
A plaintiff’s damages claim comprises economic and non-economic claims in a personal injury lawsuit. Pain and suffering is a legal term pertaining to non-economic claims such as compensation for substantial emotional and mental damages, physical pain, and other mental anguish suffered following a personal injury.
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, conditions that qualify as physical pain and suffering are:
- Traumatic brain injury
- Back pain
- Neck pain
- Nerve damage
- Paralysis, etc
Emotional pain and suffering include:
- Insomnia
- Fear
- Psychological trauma
- PTSD
- Diminishment of quality of life, etc.
If you pursue a personal injury case when a company or person harms you, you can be compensated for pain and suffering to the extent of damages incurred as long as you can provide proof of correlation between damages and your pain.
What is the Formula for Pain and Suffering?
It is not exactly easy to put a monetary value on damages like back pain or loss of quality of life, but insurance companies developed two formulas that can be used to estimate pain and suffering damages: the per diem method and the multiplier method.
The Per Diem Method: This approach involves assigning a set rate for each day you endure pain until you reach maximum medical recovery as determined by your doctor. The set rate is typically your wages, although it could be another amount.
For example, if you earn $50 per day and your doctor estimates you’ll be in pain for a year, you would multiply $50 by 365 days and be entitled to $18,250 in pain and suffering damages.
The Multiplier Method: This method involves multiplying actual economic damages (lost wages, medical bills, etc.) by a set number to determine compensation for pain and suffering.
The multiplier is fixed at 1.5 to 5, depending on the severity of your injuries. For example, if you incur $140,000 in economic loss due to gastroparesis from taking Ozempic, you might be entitled to 5 times that amount in pain and suffering due to the lifetime effect of stomach paralysis.
Why Do You Need a Pain and Suffering Calculator?
With a pain and suffering calculator, you can determine how much compensation you’re entitled to for your tort claim and decide whether to accept a settlement offer. If you’re negotiating an out-of-court settlement, you can also use the estimated amount when sending a demand letter to an insurance company.
However, the calculator is not a substitute for legal advice. It’s important to contact an experienced personal injury lawyer who will consider the unique factors involved in your case and help you negotiate the highest settlement amount possible.
How Do Insurance Companies Calculate Pain and Suffering?
There’s no fixed method for calculating pain and suffering, but insurance companies usually use the multiplier and per diem methods. Some companies use computer programs that calculate the settlement amount for pain and suffering based on the type of injury, medical treatment, and length of treatment the plaintiff received.
Factors That Can Diminish Your Claim
Proving pain and suffering claims requires adequate documentation and evidence showing how your injuries have significantly affected your day-to-day living. However, regardless of the evidence, some aspects could diminish your claim.
They include:
- Whether you were fully or partially at fault
- Pre-existing health conditions and injuries
- The severity, or rather lack thereof, of your injuries
- The proven extent to which the injuries have diminished your quality of life
- The amount of medical treatment you needed
- Loss of earning capacity and income
- Your recovery time
- The insurance company’s liability limits
The lower the level of all these factors, the less compensation you’ll receive. For example, if you’ve only had a few visits to a doctor’s hospital ER, you’re likely to receive less compensation than someone who has had to make multiple visits.
It’s also possible for the state you filed the lawsuit in to place a cap on the amount of pain and suffering settlement that victims are entitled to.
Pain and Suffering Calculator Potential Damages
There are various potential damages that a pain and suffering calculator can be used to estimate settlement for. They are:
Economic Damages
The settlement for economic damages covers out-of-pocket wages and expenses such as diminished earning capacity, lost income, future medical expenses, and medical bills lost due to the incident. Economic damages ensure you receive compensation for lost income, medication, medical treatment, and physical and mental therapy paid for.
With a pain and suffering calculator, economic damages are calculated based on the actual expenses incurred. The calculator can estimate the value by multiplying the actual expenses by a multiplier ranging from 1.5 to 5. For example, if all your medical expenses are $100,000 and your severe injuries, the pain and suffering claim for economic damages would be $500,000.
Non-economic Damages
After your injuries, you may suffer from PTSD and anxiety, have to visit the doctor regularly, lose the ability to engage in your hobbies, or even have a shorter life expectancy. Economic damages do not cover pain and suffering, which can result in financial losses to victims. Therefore, all pain and suffering, i.e., mental and physical anguish, inconvenience, loss of activities, and diminished quality of life, are filed under non-economic damages.
The compensation for non-economic damages usually depends on the claim for economic damages. For example, if you’re going to therapy to overcome PTSD after a car incident, you could claim the amount you’ve paid for therapy as economic damages.
Now, if you have related pain and suffering, such as regular panic attacks whenever you need to drive, you will multiply the factor of your economic damages with the multiplier 1.5 to 5, depending on severity.
Although a pain and suffering calculator is a reasonable method to determine non-economic compensation, it is not comprehensive. It’s better to use an experienced car accident lawyer who can consider the exact impact of your injuries on your overall quality of life to estimate the best compensation for you.
General Damages
General damages are classified under noneconomic damages and are compensation for intangible injuries that are felt but not visible. What constitutes general damages is subjective, but it covers an injury’s impact on your life and the pain and suffering you’ve endured.
Common types of general damages in a tort case include:
- Loss of consortium
- Physical pain
- Disfigurement
- Mental health problems
- Future pain and suffering
- Physical impairment or disability
- Reduced quality of life
General damages are complicated to calculate because they are intangible, subjective to the plaintiff’s feelings, and have no associated costs. You can support your claim for general damages with the testimony of an expert witness, for example, a pain management medical expert, to testify on the extent of your physical pain.
Personal Property Damages
If personal property is damaged in an incident, injury, or accident due to someone’s negligence or discomfort, a victim is entitled to financial compensation that adequately covers the cost of repairing the property, replacing it, or any other additional expenses.
Cases commonly involving personal property injury are car, boating, pedestrian, motorcycle, and commercial truck accidents. When using a pain and suffering calculator for personal property damages, you must estimate the value of everything that needs to be repaired or replaced.
For example, if you had to take your damaged car to the auto body shop, you should include the repair cost plus the cost of transporting the car to the mechanic.
Special Circumstances
Special circumstances are unique when estimating compensation with a pain and suffering calculator. Circumstances like pre-existing conditions, future medical expenses, lost future earnings, and the defendant’s level of negligence can increase or lower the multiplier when determining compensation. If the defendant’s actions were particularly reckless and preventable, you may receive higher compensation and vice versa.
Lost Wages
Lost wages refer to the economic amount you would have earned if you had not suffered a personal injury due to someone’s negligence. It includes your basic salary plus other benefits such as tips, bonuses, vacation pay, etc.
You can calculate pain and suffering related to lost wages using the per diem method, which multiplies your daily earnings plus other benefits by the number of days you need to recover from your injury.
Medical Expenses
Medical expenses are any costs incurred in treating injuries. They include doctor and ER visits, health and dental insurance premiums, prescriptions, co-pays, and over-the-counter drugs.
For example, if you suffer gastrointestinal issues from using Rybelsus and have to get medication like Domperidone for frequent vomiting, you can seek compensation for medical expenses incurred purchasing the drug.
Why You May Need to Calculate Pain and Suffering
If you’ve suffered pain due to someone’s negligence, you are entitled to proper compensation for your overall losses, including pain and suffering. Accounting for your pain and suffering in your claim also entitles you to receive a higher compensation.
Accidents and issues you may need to calculate pain and suffering for include, but aren’t limited to:
- Wrongful death cases
- Medical malpractice
- Product liability cases
- Slip and fall incidents
- Workplace injuries
- Car accidents
- Surgical errors, etc
More About Pain and Suffering Calculators
Here’s other important information you should know when calculating pain and suffering: