If you have been hurt due to the negligence of another person, then personal injury law states you can take them to court. Therein, if negligence can be proved, you can recover compensation for any injuries or damage to your property that you sustained from the accident. However, what most people don't realize is that there is actually two types of compensation that you can recover
Compensatory Damages
When you think of the funds you require after an accident to pay your medical bills or fix up your car, you are thinking of compensatory damages. In personal injury cases, you definitely won't be getting rich from compensatory damages. Instead, they are paid out to help make you whole from the loss after the accident. The reason personal injury law exists is that if someone else caused an accident and caused you harm, the law says it is not fair that you should have to pay for it. With compensatory damages, you don't. You won't make a profit from the accident, but you won't have to pay the medical bills either.
There is some misconception that if people get hurt in an accident, they have somehow found a cash cow, but this is simply not true. In most personal injury cases, those that were injured will be compensated and won't be any better off than they were. The key is that you don't want to come out worse off after a personal injury settlement.
Punitive Damages
In personal injury cases, most people are very focused on compensatory damages, and that is as they should be. However, you may also get an award of punitive damages if your case goes to court. Punitive damages are meant to punish. Often you pursue compensatory damages, and if the court sees that amount as somehow inadequate, they can add punitive damages on top of it. In essence, punitive damages are awarded to send a message to the negligent party - don't do that again.
If you were, for example, involved in a drunk driving accident. Your personal injury
Punitive damages just aren't for accidents of a criminal nature. A judge could be sympathetic to any accident and
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