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If you’ve been injured due to someone else’s negligent or intentional behavior, you have several options to recover compensation through the court system for your damages. Though they can’t change what has happened, compensatory damages are a way for the legal system to make you whole for the harm you’ve suffered at someone else’s hands. In Alabama, once you prove someone’s negligence caused your injuries, you may be awarded economic, non-economic, and even punitive damages.
Economic Damages
Economic damages are concrete, calculable injuries that can be proven through evidence like receipts, pay stubs, and medical bills. Courts may award economic damages for harms like:
- Property damage,
- Medical expenses,
- Lost wages and lost future earning capacity, and even
- Funeral costs or burial expenses.
Non-Economic Damages
Unlike economic damages, these awards are to make you whole for emotional, psychological, and mental trauma that doesn’t have a fixed value. Awards may be given for injuries including:
- Mental anguish,
- Pain and suffering,
- Disability, scarring, and disfigurement,
- Loss of consortium, and
- Loss of enjoyment of life.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages are discretionary awards that may be given by the judge or jury to the victim in addition to the initial compensatory damage award. Unlike compensatory damages, these damages aren’t meant to make victims whole – instead, they are meant to punish a defendant’s extremely bad behavior and act as a deterrent to them and others from repeating the conduct in the future.
Punitive damages aren’t often given, but when a victim proves by clear and convincing evidence someone “deliberately engaged in oppression, fraud, wantonness, or malice” and caused their injury, an award may follow. A victim may receive punitive damages up to three times the compensatory damage award with a cap of $1.5 million.
Contact an Attorney
If you or a loved one were hurt in an accident, call the skilled Mobile Personal Injury Attorneys at Stevenson Klotz today to put the best foot forward in your case and fight for maximum possible compensation. We have spent years providing comprehensive, aggressive representation for clients like you and recovering millions of dollars for their injuries. Call us at (850) 706-4226 or fill out our online Contact Page to schedule your no-obligation, free initial case evaluation. Let us review your situation and give you peace of mind starting today.