Georgia Catastrophic Personal Injury Lawsuits

A Georgia personal injury lawyer can help you get the money you need to continue living your life to the fullest

Catastrophic injuries have profound and long-term effects on the victim. It usually happens suddenly and often is the result of a serious accident. It could be a car accident, workplace accident, natural disaster, or any other type of incident. 

Catastrophic injuries result in permanent disability, significant suffering, and substantial medical costs. Georgia has a specific set of criteria to define what is a catastrophic injury.

What is a catastrophic injury in Georgia?

Georgia classifies a catastrophic injury as a severe injury that involves the spine, spinal cord, brain or skull, burns, birth injury, a fatality that involves the lungs or heart, partial or complete loss of a limb, loss of hearing or vision, or the loss of other senses. 

While no amount of money can heal these types of injuries, it’s important to understand how you can receive compensation to cover associated expenses. A catastrophic injury usually results in permanent impairment or inability to work, or the loss of enjoyment of life. An injury this severe might never lead to full recovery, which means the victim faces a lifetime of medical costs and reduced or no wages.

Types of damages you can recover for a Georgia catastrophic injury

If you suffered a catastrophic injury in Georgia caused by someone’s negligence, you can file a lawsuit to recover damages that include compensatory and punitive damages. 

Compensatory damages include both economic and non-economic costs resulting from your injury. 

Economic costs are those that can be financially quantified (i.e. they have a specific cost):

• Medical treatment like surgeries, hospital stays, doctor visits, prescription medication, MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds, other diagnostics and other treatments.
• Assistive devices like wheelchairs or prosthetics and home or vehicle modifications if necessary.
• Present lost wages and loss of future earning capacity if you need to take time off from work during your recovery or if you are unable to return to work in the same role as you had before the accident because of a disability.

Non-economic costs do not have a specific monetary amount. They include:

• Pain and suffering
• Emotional distress including Post-traumatic Stress Disorder or (PTSD) and mental anguish
• Loss of consortium
• Loss of enjoyment of life

Punitive damages

Georgia allows punitive damages. These are separate awards meant to punish the defendant and deter others from being involved in the same type of negligence that caused the injury. For example, a victim might receive punitive damages for a catastrophic injury caused by a drunk driver.

How are non-economic damages calculated?

A catastrophic injury often includes pain and suffering and emotional distress simply because of the severity of the incident, likely shock, and the after-effects of having a victim’s life changed forever. 

But how do you put a dollar value on those things? 

The courts have devised a system to determine how much those factors are “worth.” There are a few methods courts use to calculate your pain and suffering damages. Regardless, there are three primary factors that determine this amount:

1. Severity of your injury. 
2. Effects on your daily life. This depends on how much your life has changed and whether your injury is permanent.
3. How the injury affects your mental health. This might include stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions that result from the accident and the changes to your life.

Calculating pain and suffering using the multiplier method

Your lawyer would negotiate with the other party’s lawyer to determine a number between 1 and 5 based on the severity of your injury. 

A minor injury with temporary effects for which there’s expected near-full recovery might be a 1. A catastrophic injury that will leave the plaintiff with life-long, serious and debilitating issues might be a 4 or 5.

The court would multiply that number by the medical costs to arrive at a figure for pain and suffering. For example, if your medical bills are anticipated to be $600,000 and your multiplier is 4, you’d multiply 4 x $600,000 for a total of $2,400,000 in pain and suffering damages.

The per diem method

“Per diem” is Latin for “per day.” Similar to the multiplier method, your lawyer will calculate how much the injury costs you each day. Usually, this is related to something quantifiable, like your daily earnings before the accident. 

Then, your lawyer (along with actuaries and other experts) calculates how many days you’ve suffered pain from the accident. So, if you earned $200 per day and the lawyers decide that your injury might cause you 5 years of pain, you might recover $365,000 (365 days x 5 years = 1,825 days, then multiplied by $200 per day = $365,000).

How is a catastrophic injury different from less severe injuries?

Sometimes, what makes an injury catastrophic isn’t the injury, itself, but you. If you’re a surgeon who relies on their hands to save other people’s lives, and you suffer an accident that causes you to lose feeling in your fingers, that could cost you your livelihood.

It might not be catastrophic for a software developer who can still use a keyboard, but it’s a major problem for a person performing surgery.

Or, as another example—a single mother is in a car accident that leaves her with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). She is no longer able to work or care for her three children. In addition to losing her income, she also requires around-the-clock care for her children. Her needs, and the financial needs of three children who require care until they’re old enough to be on their own financially, is a lot of money.

By contrast, a 75-year-old man who is retired and has no dependents suffers the same injury. While he requires the same medical care, his financial needs are different because his life expectancy is shorter than that of the young mother and he has only himself to support financially. 

So, while each of these plaintiffs would receive what’s necessary in their situation, it’s not the same amount even though it might be a similar type of injury.

Negligence and catastrophic injuries

At the crux of this and every personal injury is negligence.

Negligence is when the accident or injury was caused because someone’s action (or inaction) lacked reasonable care to prevent an injury that was foreseeable. In other words, these elements must be present to make a negligence claim:

1. Duty. The defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff. This can be a situation where the parties know each other, like a doctor/patient relationship, for example—or when they don’t, like a driver and pedestrian.
   
   A driver has a duty to every other road user to drive in a way that won’t cause harm. Likewise, a property owner has a duty to protect anyone legally permitted to be on their property from suffering harm due to a hazardous condition. 
2. Breach. The defendant did not uphold their duty to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm to the plaintiff. “Reasonably foreseeable” means that an average person could anticipate that their behavior would cause someone to become injured. 
3. Causation. The defendant’s behavior has to be the direct cause of the plaintiff’s injury. 
4. Injury. There must be an actual physical injury—a close call that ultimately left you uninjured won’t qualify for compensation in a lawsuit. 
5. Damages. The injury must have cost you money.

If you or a loved one have suffered a catastrophic injury, you likely deserve some legal compensation—particularly if it was the result of someone’s negligence. These complex legal cases require medical experts, actuaries, and other professionals to ensure you receive what you need.