The papers are full of a story where a young lawyer, who fell dancing, was received $6,000,000. The reports suggest she received this because lawyers are so well paid and she lost the ability to work.
In fact, where there is a loss of ability to work and there are ongoing medical costs (and the injured person is young and has a normal life expectancy) damages are always huge.
Consider an auto mechanic, say 32, who suffers injuries and cannot work. Assume the injuries require daily nursing case. Assume the mechanic will live to 68. Finally assume the mechanic was making $50,000/yr.
Do simple straight line math -- it's far more complex, you have to consider present value of money, tax implications, inflation etc etc but I'm looking at a ballpark figure.
If the nursing care is $20,000/yr then, after 36 years the cost is $720,000. The income loss is $1,800,000 or a total of $2,520,000. And this ignores related family claims.
Make the mechanic a little younger (like the lawyer), or make the medical costs higher (and $100,000/yr is common enough where there is a catastrophic case) and the number, already huge, become staggering.
4 comments:
She fell on the dance floor after she had been drinking.This is a part of life.It was a freak accident.
The $6M figure damages may be reasonable but I find it difficult that someone (or something) should be found at fault.
Another way to look at it;How could you argue that someone had a great career ahead of her in law when she clearly lacked common sense? Was she unaware of the risk in dancing while drunk?
There are risks in everything we do.If there had been no injuries in the fall it might have made it to America's funniest Home Video's.
The incident is a tragedy but no one is to blame.
"... at fault".
Don't we live in a no-fault society now?
Everyone pays.
Michael St.Pauls
Maybe we'd have a different opinion if the new stories detailed the nature of her injuries and the manner in which she was injured. If dancing while drunk is true then where was her responsibility in this? 5 million sounds great except that we don't know whether she is now incapable of ever working again. How does a fall while dancing incapacitate her fully? And if it didn't then 5 mill is just a portion of what she would supposedly have earned. The numbers you presented make sense for the mechanic but we don't know enough about this incident to be sure this isn't just lawyers helping lawyers.
There are risks in everything we do.If there had been no injuries in the fall it might have made it to America's funniest Home Video's. 5 million sounds great except that we don't know whether she is now incapable of ever working again.
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