How Does A Jury Know What To Award You In Your Case?

Not all injury cases go to trial. Some will settle before a lawsuit is even filed, and others will settle after the lawsuit is filed, but before the case is brought in front of a jury for your day in trial. But if your case does make it to trial, and it is up to a jury to determine how badly you were injured, and how much your injuries are worth, you may be wondering how jurors make their decisions?

No Set of Rules Valuing Your Injuries

There is no book, no guidelines, no mathematical formula, and no laws that say that a given injury is worth a certain amount, or that a jury has to award you a given amount of money if you have a particular type of injury. The judge does not say that your surgery is worth a given dollar amount to the jury.

In fact, not only are there no guidelines, but a jury doesn’t even have to follow what other juries do, or what they have done. One jury can give someone $10,000 for an injury, and a week later a different jury in a different case could award $100,000 for the exact same injury.

Juries are left to make their decisions, based on the evidence presented to them, and how the evidence is presented.

Measuring Damages

Some types of evidence about your injuries and your damages are easy to value: injuries or damages that are countable, are easy for a jury to calculate.

A jury can look at your medical expenses, your lost wages, or the medical expenses that you anticipate incurring in the future, do some math, and figure out what your damages actually are.

But other kinds of damages are more subjective, because they can’t be counted. For example, what is your pain and suffering worth? Or the frustration you have at not being able to get back to work and provide for your family? Or the sadness over how your injuries have left you without the ability to play in your favorite sport, or run around with your kids? What are these kinds of damages worth?

Testimony Helps

It is up to your lawyer to present a picture to a jury that tells the jury how much your life has changed because of these kinds of injuries. It also depends on you, as you will be the one who testifies about how your life has changed after your accident, and nobody knows what you are going through, and how it has affected you, the way that you do.

Other experts can also be used to show the jury how much a given injury hurts, or the limitations that you can expect to have because of your injuries. Juries understand that not being able to, for example, ever lift a box that weighs over 5 pounds, or not being able to take a walk around the block, can impact your life.

We understand what you can expect to happen at your injury trial. Call the Clinton personal injury lawyers at Fox Farley Willis & Burnette, PLLC, today.

Source:

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