In 2024, the CDC counted 271,729 total injury deaths in the United States, including both intentional and unintentional causes; of those, 197,449 deaths were from unintentional injuries such as falls and motor vehicle crashes. Aside from deaths, unintentional injuries also caused about 26.2 million emergency room visits that year.
“Can you sue for pain and suffering?” This question has no clear answer and instead depends on the type of injury, the circumstances of the claim, and the applicable state law.
It is common for damages based on pain and suffering to be included as part of a claim following an injury. The challenge in doing so is proving those damages. Damages for pain and suffering are the physical and emotional damages suffered, which are seen to reduce or affect the normal way of life and are often experienced for some time following an injury.
Find out when you can sue for pain and suffering and how these damages may be calculated.
What Pain and Suffering Actually Covers
Damages for personal injury are usually categorized into two groups. The first group is called economic damages since it is made up of damages for which there is an invoice or receipt, like medical expenses, loss of wages, and the value of a damaged vehicle. Pain and suffering come under the second category, which is known as non-economic damages.
Non-economic damages are those types of damages that cannot be quantified using a bill or invoice. It includes the experience of physical pain while recovering from the injuries, persistent pain caused by an injury, stress or depression resulting from the incident, and loss of enjoyment of certain activities.
In most states, an injured person can pursue pain and suffering as part of a negligence claim, provided they can show another party’s carelessness caused the injury.
How These Damages Get Calculated
Unlike medical expenses, where there is a receipt to prove the cost, pain and suffering has no such documentation. Lawyers or insurance claims adjusters will base their assessment of the value of the claim on one of two methods.
The multiplier method takes the economic losses, consisting mainly of medical bills and lost income, and multiplies them by a number, normally ranging between 1.5 and 5. A serious or permanently disabling injury will likely result in a higher multiplier being used, while an injury that is short-term and fully recovered will be at the lower end of the spectrum.
The per diem method places a price tag on each day of pain, starting at the date of injury until the person is at maximum medical improvement and then multiplying that figure by the number of days the pain endured.
Does State Law Limit What You Can Recover
A cap on pain and suffering awards will depend on the particular state, and this variability is much more important than most injured individuals realize. Several states do not have any general caps on non-economic damages in regular personal injury cases, but some jurisdictions have caps for these damages in medical malpractice actions. There are other differences that apply in cases of wrongful death and against governmental defendants.
Since caps on damages vary by state and type of case, and legislatures may revisit these caps occasionally, the best way to find out what cap applies in a specific case is to look at the current legislation in the relevant state rather than in general lists.
Comparative Fault Can Reduce, or Eliminate, Your Claim
Keep in mind that the claim for pain and suffering is never independent of the issue of fault. In fact, most states have either the doctrine of contributory or comparative negligence, under which the amount of an injured individual’s own fault can be used to lower the damages awarded or, in several states, deny recovery altogether if more at fault than the defendant.
This principle is one reason documentation of an injury is important in the early stages of an accident. Pictures and contact information of witnesses, along with immediate medical attention, will be important in establishing the amount of damage caused. It also makes it easier to determine the pain and suffering award, if any.
Building a Credible Pain and Suffering Claim
Non-economic damages are largely qualitative in nature, which is why there’s so much focus on the way a claim is articulated.
Having access to a long-term medical report or diary where patients explain what they experience over time, and not only how they first appeared and were treated, is meaningful. Patients often create their own narratives by sometimes writing journals about how pain has interfered in various tasks of daily living or how the injury proved to be a nuisance in general. These accounts can be meaningful and be used to boost a pain and suffering claim.
It is also worth exploring the viewpoints of family, friends, or other people from the patient’s life, who are more likely to concentrate on how the injury affects the well-being, daily activities, social interactions, or professional functions of an individual. Car accidents present their own version of this challenge, since the visible damage to a vehicle rarely lines up with the severity of the injury a passenger actually sustained. Since building this kind of record takes both time and legal skill, having the right attorney matters. Richmond personal injury lawyer T. Noel Brooks uses his extensive trial experience to successfully represent individuals injured in automobile accidents.
The Bottom Line
“Pain and suffering” is a reimbursable form of damage in most personal injury lawsuits, but it is also one of the more complex parts of the claim to evaluate and prove. The laws surrounding cap limits, comparative negligence, and proof vary from state to state sufficiently that generalized advice does not help very much.
Those considering filing a suit are best advised to learn the laws that apply in their state at the outset, rather than relying on numbers seen online.
