Filing a personal injury lawsuit can be a pretty daunting task. You will need to have some basic familiarity with a variety of laws and will need to be ready for every stage of the lawsuit. To help you ease into the subject, here are a couple of topics that you should start with:

Is a Lawsuit Right for You?

If you were injured by another party, then it is perfectly normal to desire some form of compensation. However, a lawsuit isn't necessarily the right way to go about getting that compensation. In some circumstances and in some states, a lawsuit might simply be less lucrative and more stressful than other options.

For instance, some states won't let you file a lawsuit for injuries sustained in a car crash unless you were severely injured in a way that impacts your entire life. In situations like those, insurance claims can often be a lot simpler.

Of course, lawsuits do offer you higher compensation in most cases. As long as you expect that you have a good chance of winning your lawsuit, then you should at least explore the option in its entirety.

Types of Damages

When starting a lawsuit, you will need to decide what kinds of damages you want to pursue.

First, you need to think about the general compensatory damages that you need to offset the money that you lost due to the injury. This can be auto repair costs, medical costs, lost wages, or even loss of future potential earnings. If there is a monetary value that can be objectively associated with your injury, you can put it in your lawsuit without much interference from the law.

On the other hand, when it comes to non-economic damages (such as pain and suffering or loss of companionship), there is a good chance that your options will be restricted. Many states will limit the non-economic damages that you can ask for, but they can also be restricted depending on the nature of your injury. While you might have an easy time asking for non-economic damages in the event of a wrongful death lawsuit, you could be limited quite a bit if asking for the same damages in a medical malpractice case.

Finally, you have punitive damages, which are quite rare. The main reason for their rarity is that punitive damages have pretty strict requirements regarding when they can be pursued. Suffice it to say, your case will probably not involve punitive damages, and that won't really impact you all that much since they are meant to punish the other party rather than to compensate you. For assistance, talk to a personal injury lawyer in Bethlehem, PA.

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