What Are Economic Damages in New York?
Injury victims in New York will often be eligible to receive two types of damages: economic and non-economic.
Non-economic damages are those that don’t necessarily impact your finances but still impact your life. These include pain and suffering, emotional trauma, and similar hardships.
But what about the damages that directly affect your financial wellbeing? Those are called economic damages.
Understanding Economic Damages
Economic damages are meant to compensate you for any financial hardships you’ve experienced due to your injury. Non-economic damages are less tangible, which makes them more difficult to calculate in many circumstances.
In most cases, the amount you receive in economic damages will exceed that of any non-economic damages, despite there currently being no cap on the latter. (A recent state bill, however, proposed setting limits on the amount of compensation that can be recovered in personal injury cases.)
Therefore, it is essential for New York personal injury victims to understand how economic damages work. But before we get into the nuances of how you pursue economic damages, let’s clarify which forms of compensation would be considered economic damages.
Examples of economic damages include medical expenses, lost wages or reduced earning potential, cost of care, loss of property, and anything else that adversely impacts your financial situation.
To be clear, economic damages, as opposed to non-economic and punitive damages, are simply meant to provide compensation for the money you’ve lost as a result of your accident. They are not intended to reprimand or punish a defendant.
Call a New York Personal Injury Lawyer
Whether you’ve been hurt in a car crash or a serious fall, you will inevitably need money to repair your health and any property or belongings that may have been damaged as a result of your accident.
To receive the compensation the law entitles you to, contact a New York personal injury lawyer at Greenstein & Milbauer, LLP. Call us at 1-800-VICTIM2 (842-8462) or fill out the form below to get started.