Special damages personal injury cases refer to damages resulting from injury actions or omissions by the accused party (called defendant) to the injured person or plaintiff. Regarding damages for personal injury, under California law, there are now two broad classifications: special damages and general damages.
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What Are Special Damages Personal Injury Cases?
Special damages are, unlike general damages, special damages personal injury, specific damages defined with a term that refers to specific economic costs incurred by a specific person that otherwise would have been incurred by someone due to some incident or injury. Identification covers all costs distinctly identifiable. Unlike the rest, special damages can provide proof by measure of value.
Examples are:
- Medical treatment (for past and future injuries)
- Costs for disability and accommodations
- Loss of wages, income, and earning capacities
- Repair to either vehicle or property necessitated by the accident
Any particular financial loss sustained by a plaintiff due to some act of negligence exercised or wrongful acts made by a defendant constitutes special damages. The damages to the plaintiff, then, very much revert to the whole for all economic losses. Assessment of the difference between the actual financial loss and what the jury feels is just.
What Are General Damages?
General damages mean pain and suffering; those are non-economic damages, or better yet, characterize the softer, more intangible means in which that specific incident or injury has, in fact, affected the individual. Unlike special damages personal injury, those general ones do not, in general, tell a specific dollar loss due to the injury victim, but rather would reimburse the victim in a very broad sense from the emotional, mental, physical, or psychological injuries brought about through the actions of the defendant.
Among those general damages include:
- Physical pain
- Emotional distress
- Mental suffering
- Psychological trauma
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Impairment or disability
- Scarring or disfigurement
- Depression or anxiety
- Diminished quality of living
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Loss of companionship or consortium
- Grief or mourning
General damages are much more complex to reach in comparison with special damages since these types, in most cases, are invisible and therefore usually very subjective. Certainly, pain-suffering would not be proven as broken bones. Instead, damages would depend mostly on expert reports, such as those received from psychiatrists or therapists, and other testimonies coming from mental health specialists. During the process, the court may also ask the plaintiff, relatives, or friends to testify.
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A Third Category: Punitive Damages
Compensatory damages—including special damages, personal injury, and general damages—aim to compensate victims for economic and non-economic losses resulting from accidents. However, in certain cases, courts may also award punitive damages. The object of punitive damages is usually to punish or chastise a defendant for conduct from which there was such an affront to public decency that it merits a further sanction.
In some cases, a judge might order punitive damages against a defendant who acts with gross negligence, recklessness, malice, or complete indifference to the safety of others. A plaintiff may sue for punitive damages under the state of California if there exists clear and convincing evidence that such oppression, fraud, or malice is of the defendant’s behavior.
Claiming Damages
The mere difference between the plaintiff and the defendant in the normal tort doesn’t matter for the claim of the plaintiff. In fact, the abnormal manifestations will justify compensation in every case of a really normal tort. For example, an ordinary fender-bender causing an accident could be caused by Driver 1. More special is the fact that because of that accident, Driver 2 happens to have a rare condition and needs to undergo many treatments to relieve him of a considerable amount of physical pain caused by that accident. Thus, Driver 1 must pay both special damages for specific medical bills and general damages for pain and suffering that Driver 2 claims, even though Driver 2 likely wouldn’t have suffered any injury if she hadn’t had this rare condition.
What types of cases do we handle?
- Bicycle accidents
- Wrongful deaths
- Truck accidents
- Product liability
- And many others
Acquiring damages through any or a combination of special damages personal injury, general damages, and/or punitive damages is very likely to need the help of a personal injury attorney. Proof of damages and establishment of the plaintiff’s entitlement to damages is paramount in such actions, and the lawyer would negotiate a proper and just settlement amount with the insurance company or go to trial to seek maximum damage awards.
Bottom Line!
General and special damages are explained in personal injury. At Tenina Law, we help clients understand that special damages personal injury cases involve measurable financial losses, while general damages are non-economic compensation for injuries that cannot be measured by a dollar value, such as pain and suffering, emotional distress, and other impacts that cannot be fixed but are necessary to compensate for the effect an injury has on a person’s life. An example of special damages, by contrast, would be medical bills or lost wages in a personal injury case—specific monetary amounts attached to certain events.
