A lady got hurt badly in a car crash down in South Florida. The Florida Record says she’s taking the person who caused the crash to court. She’s asking for money because she can’t enjoy life like before. She also wants cash for her injuries, medical bills, pain, not being able to work (which means no wages), and the way her body looks different now.
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Some types of harm we should look at are important because, while we can count medical bills and lost wages easily, how much someone misses enjoying life is harder to measure. But still, it can add a lot to the total amount of harm someone has faced. It might be a big part of what they get paid for being hurt, especially if they didn’t lose much money, like a young person, someone who’s retired, or a parent who stays home.
Personal Injury Lawsuit
In a personal injury lawsuit, loss of life enjoyment is considered a component of pain and suffering damages, particularly in Florida. While not all states recognize this as a distinct and calculable compensable loss, Florida does. In this context, pain and suffering typically refers to the direct physical pain resulting from injuries sustained in a Florida car accident. Loss of life enjoyment, on the other hand, encompasses the emotional, physical, and psychological losses that a person experiences long-term as a result of the crash.
Our Fort Lauderdale car accident attorneys have helped many people who got hurt. They’ve asked for money to help people with different kinds of injuries like broken bones, scars, really bad back problems, not being able to move their legs, or damage to their brains from accidents.
Examples of Loss of Life Enjoyment
Florida Standard Jury Instruction 501.2 says that when you can’t enjoy life as much as before or in the future because of something bad that happened, like an injury, it’s called “loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life.” This is a type of damage that doesn’t involve money directly.
Our car accident lawyers who handle car accidents in Fort Lauderdale understand that when someone says they’ve lost the joy in life due to an accident, they have to prove to the judge that they can’t do the things they love anymore, like hobbies or activities. They’re saying that if the accident hadn’t happened and they hadn’t gotten hurt, they wouldn’t be in this situation.
Imagine you love playing soccer, like, it’s your favorite thing to do after school and on weekends. But then, one day, you get into a car accident and hurt your knee badly. Now, you can’t play soccer like you used to, or maybe not even at all. That feeling of not being able to do something you love anymore? That’s what the court would call “loss of life enjoyment.”
Before the accident, some things made you happy or felt important. It could be cooking, helping others, or playing with your kids or grandkids. If the accident makes it hard or impossible to be close with your partner, they might feel like they’ve lost something too (and they might get money for it if you’re married).
The special jury rules say that there’s no precise way to measure these kinds of damages, but they should be “fair and just based on the evidence.” Since there’s a lot left up to interpretation, it’s really important to explain these damages to the jury in a clear way that they can understand easily and in a way that can be looked at objectively.
In court, we can bring in friends or family of the person who got hurt in the accident to talk about what they used to enjoy before the accident and how their injuries changed things. We might also use numbers and maybe even bring in an expert to talk about money stuff. Like, we could show how much a person’s life is worth using a special model called the hedonic model.
This model says that the happiness of a healthy 20-year-old is worth more than that of a healthy 70-year-old. We think about things like how old someone is, if they’re a boy or a girl, how healthy they are, and what they like to do. We also look at how strong their relationships are and how much it costs when something bad happens to those relationships or their favorite things to do.
Final Words
Our Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyers have helped lots of people hurt in car crashes in Fort Lauderdale by getting them money for not being able to enjoy life like they used to. They can also advise on the best way to handle your case.
