Your neck injury claim damages will be limited by the type of neck injury, the nature of the accident that lead to the injury, whether your state requires caps on damages in personal injury cases, and the comparative fault laws that are applicable to your situation. These laws also vary by state.
Type of Neck Injury
Neck injury lawsuits are incredibly common, and understandably so. Neck injuries can be very severe, with recovery times lasting from many months to several years or longer. Even in the best cases, before recovery is complete, patients often must contend with painfully inflamed muscles, joints, and ligaments every single day for months. Neck injuries also involve widespread reductions in activity levels, impaired range of motion, loss of work and family time, and sometimes depression and other physical and mental health costs. If another’s negligence, or dangerous conditions are responsible for your neck injury, then receiving monetary damages in proportion to your loss, sufficient to “compensate” you for that loss, is the basic objective of personal injury law in the U.S. civil justice system. All else being equal, the more severe your neck injury, the greater your damage award can be. But there are many other possible limitations on neck injury claim damages.
Caps on Damages in a Neck Injury Lawsuit
In many states, there are also caps on a particular type of damages that, for neck injury plaintiffs, is often quite relevant. Monetary compensation for more than simple lost wages, medical bills, etc, covers a set of damages called “quality of life” damages. These include “pain and suffering” and other losses that are sometimes difficult to quantify, but are nonetheless real. In most U.S. jurisdictions, a jury and judge can determine non-economic damages (in severe cases) to be well into the multi-millions of dollars.
Some state legislatures have put caps on “quality of life” damages, like California, which has a $250,000 cap. Other states like Georgia and Illinois have ruled that such caps (usually in the range of $250,000 to $500.000) are unconstitutional, because the legislature is interfering with justice, meaning, the right to a trial by jury is affected. It is a controversial issue, but suffice to say that if you live in California, and you win your neck injury lawsuit, the maximum amount of damages you will receive is your “economic” damages for lost wages, medical costs, etc, plus $250,000. The facts of your individual case, the severity of your neck injury, and the magnitude of the personal losses that led to your neck injury and damages claim are not relevant.
Neck Injury Lawsuit Settlements
Sometimes, neck injury lawsuits do not make it all the way to trial and they settle early instead. In theory, neck injury settlements generally result in a lower payout to the plaintiff than s/he could have obtained at trial. But trials are long, lasting months to years, expensive (attorneys, court costs, etc), stressful, and, perhaps most importantly, uncertain. No matter how strong your legal case is, victory at trial is never assured. And if you lose, you get nothing. A successful settlement negotiation at least assures you whatever amount you, your attorney, and the defendant(s) agree to. If you are open to the negotiation process in settlement, you may find that the personal value of your settlement ends up being much greater than its actual dollar value.
Accidents and Comparative Fault in Neck Injury Lawsuits
You asked if there was a limit to your neck injury lawsuit damages, in particular if you were at fault for the accident in which you were injured. This will depend heavily on the particular circumstances of your case, meaning, who else was also at fault, accident reconstruction, etc., and the laws in your state for how fault is “distributed” in personal injury cases in court. This distribution occurs according to a set of rules that vary by state, and if you were somewhat or entirely at fault, it will determine the extent to which you are able to recover neck injury damages.
Most states in the U.S. apply a law called “comparative fault”, or “comparative negligence,” in personal injury cases like your neck injury suit. If you live in a comparative fault state, then the court will look to what percentage of responsibility you have for your own neck injury, and compare it with the defendant’s percentage of responsibility for the same. If the court determines that your fault was at least as great as the defendant’s (i.e. – 50 or 51 percent, depending on the state), then you would be barred from recovering any damages at all. But, in these states, if you were only 49% or less at fault, then you will still be allowed to recover, but your damage award will be reduced by that same percentage.
The few remaining states that don’t apply some form of comparative negligence use something called “contributory negligence” – an older, and usually harsher standard of review that actually forbids the plaintiff from recovering damages for injuries when s/he bears any (even 5 percent) of the fault. As of 2011, Alabama, District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia were the remaining contributory negligence states.
Neck Injury Damages Calculation in a Comparative Fault State
Let’s imagine a scenario for calculating neck injury damages: you were shopping in a local grocery store you go to every day, slipped on a banana peel one day, hurt your neck, and are now filing a lawsuit against the store. At trial, let’s say the store is held to be 80 percent at fault for your neck injury because, “that banana peel had been sitting there for a week, and any reasonable store owner would have cleaned its aisles better.” The court then tells you you’re 20 percent at fault for your own neck injury because you, let’s say, “didn’t take enough reasonable care for your own well-being to step around a banana peel that had been there a whole week.” Here, if your total damages were $10,000, in a “comparative fault” state, your award is reduced by $2,000 (20 percent) to $8,000. If this case took place in one of the five “contributory negligence” states listed above, then you would be barred from recovery entirely.
Getting Help
As discussed, most states place various types of limitations on the amount of money that you could recover, by law, in a neck injury lawsuit or settlement. How fault affects your recovery will also vary depending on the law in your state. A majority of states have some sort of comparative fault system, where your damage award is limited by what percentage you were at fault, while a few states bar your recovery if the accident took place there under “contributory negligence.” The most important thing to do, aside from obtaining and maintaining proper medical attention for your neck injury, is to find a qualified neck injury lawsuit attorney in your jurisdiction. Only a local attorney can advise you as to all of your possible options and any damage limitations to your neck injury claim.