How Much Compensation Can You Expect After a Car Crash?

After a car wreck, you’re likely to have personal injury expenses, and these can ruin your finances and complicate daily life. Finding a “car accident lawyer near me” is the best way to protect the compensation you’re entitled to under Texas law.

How Much Compensation Can You Expect in a Car Wreck Personal Injury Case?

It’s impossible to say exactly what your claim is worth without evaluating the details, and only a lawyer can do that effectively. Generally speaking, the average personal injury lawsuit in Texas wins $826,892 when decided by a jury, but this average is misleading. It’s skewed by the few really high verdicts there have been (just as one student in the class with a very high grade skews the “average” for everyone else). The true median number is just over $21,000. The typical range for everyday, “normal” accidents is between $30,000 and $75,000.

But all of these numbers are affected by the details of your case. To help you get a real sense for what your case is worth, your lawyer will need to consider:

• What types of damages you can recover
• Whether you bear any fault
• Insurance limits
• How badly you’ve been injured

Types of Damages You Can Recover

You can seek two main categories of compensation: economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages cover your measurable financial losses, such as hospital bills. Non-economic damages are the effects you can’t quantify, like pain and suffering.

Punitive, or “exemplary” damages are possible, but they are quite rare. Courts award them only if the other driver acted with gross negligence, and they are meant to punish extreme behavior rather than compensate you directly. Texas has limits on how much a jury can award.

Your Fault

A jury or insurance adjuster will assign a percentage of responsibility to everyone involved in the crash. As long as your share of fault stays at 50% or less, you can still recover compensation, but the amount gets reduced by your percentage of fault.

Insurance companies will try to shift as much blame as possible onto you to lower what they have to pay, and that’s why it’s important to have a lawyer protecting you right from the beginning.

Insurance Limits

The amount of insurance coverage the liable party has will set a practical limit to what you can actually collect. If your damages run beyond the policy limits, you’ll need to turn to your own insurance or consider pursuing a personal claim against the other driver. Your lawyer will help you figure out the best course of action.

How Bad Your Injuries Are

Normally, you’ll multiply your total economic losses by a number between one (for very minor injuries) and five (for catastrophic, life-altering injuries). Thus, the greater your economic losses, the greater your non-economic losses have the potential to be.

In addition, the worse the injuries, and the longer they take to heal, the greater the multiplier number will be. It makes a huge difference whether you’re multiplying $30,000 in economic damages by one or by three.

Find a “Car Accident Lawyer Near Me” Now

To protect your rights and find out how much your claim is really worth, contact the Almaraz Law Firm in McAllen, San Antonio, Edinburg, Midland, and Odessa now, and let us serve you wherever you are in the state. 

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