“Pain and suffering” is the ugly duckling of personal injury damage claims. Many people roll their eyes when those three words are spoken, especially when spoken by personal injury lawyers. The concept is so unpopular, so despised, that when Syracuse and Central New York personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers pick juries for trial, one of the most important questions we ask, to see whether a juror can be fair, is, “what do you think of awarding compensation for pain and suffering”? Many, many prospective jurors say, “I’m against it” or like words.
Yet New York personal injury law entitles victims of the careless, negligent or intentional acts of others to FULL compensation for all their losses, including lost wages, medical expenses and, yes, “pain and suffering”. Why? Think of the “scale of justice” (pictured on this page). When someone is injured through someone else’s fault, the scale tips down on one side. The “down” side is where the victim is. The whole idea of our civil justice system is to tip the scale back up to a balanced state again. If someone has suffered lost wages, medical expenses, and pain and suffering, would the scale be tipped upright again if he or she were compensated only for lost wages and medical expenses, but not pain and suffering?
Unfortunately, people seriously injured in an accident don’t just jump up off the pavement, brush themselves off, and go on with their lives as if nothing happened. Pain and Suffering sometimes lasts a lifetime. The victim’s way of life can be completely altered. It converts athletes into couch potatoes. It turns happy people into sad, anxious people. It turns families upside down when one parent, or child, is constantly in pain.