According to a report prepared by the Canadian Transportation Safety Board, at this time, around 300,000 accidents happen every year. As a result, half of these involved people received different types of injuries.
These injuries range from mild to serious, & in the worst scenario, can even result in someone’s death — ultimately causing disruption and inconvenience to the victim’s life. In these crucial times, a car accident lawyer in Calgary can work as a saviour & deal with all the problems with complete ease right from scratch to the end.
Want to know in detail how much someone can sue for a car accident in Alberta? Let’s get started:
How Much Can Someone Sue For A Car Accident In Alberta?
Actually, there is no specific range of how much someone can sue for a car accident in Alberta. It tends to vary from case to case, depending on various factors.
However, a car accident victim can sue the at-fault party for the full of their damages. This value can be thousand dollars to one lakh dollars.
The severity of the damages, the extent of negligence, types of insurance policy, and many other factors work in determining the total value of the case. Change in any of these factors will eventually affect the total amount of the compensation.
Car accident victims usually sue for compensation that covers the victim’s legal damages. Sometimes, they also ask for punitive damage.
Punitive damages are awarded to a plaintiff for punishing the defendant for a reckless act. Legal damages refer to the damages that the victim faces after an accident.
These damages are as follows:
Medical Expenses:
The defendant who wrongfully causes a car accident and injury of the victim, s/he will be held responsible for the victim’s total medical expenses.
The person or company can directly pay this. Here, medical expenses include the cost of diagnosis, cure, treatment, and mitigation of the injuries. Ambulance bills, medicine bills, surgery fees, and all other costs related to the victim’s treatment will also be added to the medical expenses.
Lost Wages:
According to the law of Canada, you can add the lost wages in your personal injury cases. Lost wages basically refer to the income that you would have earned if you weren’t injured.
For instance, regular payments like hourly or salary, overtime, bonuses, commissions, vacation and personal sick days, self-employment income, etc. All these incomes will get add up to the final amount of compensation for what you are suing.
Lost Earning Capacity:
This law also permits the future loss of wages that the victim could have earned in the future if s/he were not severely sick or injured due to the accident. This type of loss is called Lost Earning Capacity in law.
More precisely, this term lost earning capacity refers to the difference between what the plaintiff would have earned if they were not injured and what they will earn after recovery. It also includes all the income included in the lost wages.
Loss Of Consortium:
Loss of consortium means the loss of companionship, intimacy, and moral support, like wrongfully injuring someone’s partner. It is the coverage for recovering the non-economic compensatory damages.
This recovery will not include the economic losses of the injured partner like medical bills, lost wages, etc. However, there are some elements that are needed to be proved in a loss of consortium case. Such as, the spouse is injured by someone’s negligence where the plaintiff and the injured person are legally married.
Pain And Sufferings:
Pain and suffering refer to the compensation for covering the physical and mental pain the victim has got because of the accident.
This damage is not determinable and coverable, which is called non-economic damages in law. As it is not calculatable, a multiplier method is used here. Here, the plaintiff or lawyer multiplies the total economic damages of the victim by 1 to 5.
Property Damages:
Property damage includes all the damages of the properties like vehicles which are caused by accident. This damage is very easy to determine. After determining this, you need to add this with the final amount of compensation as well.
Conclusion
These are basically all the elements of legal damages. You need to calculate all of these and sum those up. Here you can also add the amount of punitive damage. After that, the amount you will get will be the final value of your car accident case.
It simply means that you want this amount as compensation for your car accident. Hopefully, after going through the article, all your queries regarding “how much someone can sue for a car accident in Alberta” are clear now.
