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Scarring and disfigurement are often part of serious injuries, but scarring does not always have a material effect on things like your ability to care for yourself or your ability to work. Even so, scarring and disfigurement damages are an important part of injury cases.
Damages can be paid for scarring and disfigurement under the umbrella of “pain and suffering” damages. You can get damages for the change to your appearance and any large, visible scars. Not all scarring can lead to damages, but drastic disfigurement can certainly lead to significant damages. Disfigurement can include loss of tissue and burns as well as scarring, and some disfigurement does affect your ability to work or care for yourself.
For help with your injury case, call Wruck Paupore’s Indiana personal injury attorneys at (219) 322-1166 today.
Some scars are just visual and might not be “worth” much by way of damages. However, many have the following features and results that can cause severe impacts on your life.
Usually, scarring and disfigurement usually must be “severe” to qualify for damages on their own. If you suffered other injuries, you can get damages for them independent of any scarring.
However, usually you need more than just a small surgical scar or burn.
The location of your scarring affects whether and how much you can get in damages for the injury. Facial scars are often seen as the most serious because they are so visible and so obvious. The same is true with neck scars.
Scars on the hands or other visible locations may also be worth more than scars hidden by typical clothing.
People think of scarring as just a visual change, but scars can have deeper effects:
“Scarring” isn’t always a great umbrella term to describe just how severe some damage can be. Both “scarring” and “disfigurement” may also encompass serious burns. However, other injuries involve actual lost tissue, partial amputation, and avulsions (having tissue torn off the body).
Something like a missing part of your cheek or jaw is going to be a far more serious and far more disfiguring injury than a burn under your clothing.
Scars and burns that totally change your face and appearance cause intense emotional distress. Even lesser changes can be distressing, especially if they remind you of the injury and cause you to relive aspects of that distress.
Three areas of damages are usually available in personal injury cases, and all of them can apply to scar, burn, and disfigurement cases, with an emphasis on pain and suffering damages.
If you need medical care to treat the injuries that ultimately caused the scars, that should be covered. Additionally, some medical care might be more expensive or intensive to help avoid scarring, like having a plastic surgeon stitch a facial wound instead of leaving it to the normal ER doctors.
Depending on the location and condition of the scars, you may also be able to claim reasonable damages for plastic surgery, laser procedures, and other procedures to reduce the appearance or intensity of scarring.
If your work is affected by scarring, you can claim damages for that. For example, models and actors may not be able to continue their work at all or may suffer reduced wages because of visible scarring.
If scars affect your motor skills – such as burns on your hands preventing you from using fine motor skills – that can also result in lost wages.
One of the biggest areas of damages for scars and disfigurement is pain and suffering – also generally called “non-economic damages”. These generally account for all of the emotional distress, lost ability, and other effects that come with scarring and disfigurement, with more intense and life-altering scarring being worth more.
Medical bills and lost wages are calculated by their actual value; whatever reasonable medical costs you incur should be paid, and however much you lose (or will lose) in income should be paid.
Pain and suffering, mental anguish, and other “non-economic” damages have other calculation methods based on severity.
There are no price tags on these damages, so various factors need to be considered to determine how “severe” your case is.
Non-economic damages are usually calculated in two ways:
Both insurance and lawsuits cover scarring in many cases.
Burns and other disfigurement are also covered in the same way severe scarring would be.
Some people rely on their physical appearance for their job, such as actors, newscasters, and models. If you suffer a disfiguring injury that makes finding work harder or reduces your ability to work, it could result in lost wage damages on top of pain and suffering damages.
Lost sensation and fine motor skills can also lose you income.
Call Wruck Paupore’s Indianapolis, IN personal injury attorneys at (219) 322-1166 for a free review of your potential case.
Don is a founding partner and one of the nation’s top-ranked personal injury litigators. He is a member of the Multi-million Dollar Advocates Forum, which includes less than 1% of the nation’s trial lawyers, and awarded the highest ranking given by Martindale Hubbel and AVVO.
More importantly, Don understands representing personal injury victims is about more than recovering the best settlement: it’s about helping clients get back on their feet and supporting them in every aspect of their recovery.
In nearly all cases, our clients seek compensation from the wrongdoer’s insurance company. Before forming Wruck Paupore, Jason worked for a prominent law firm representing some of the world’s largest insurers. This experience gives Jason a deep understanding of the insurance industry and the strategies it uses to pay injury victims as little as possible.
Jason -- and our entire team -- put this inside knowledge to work to force insurance companies to pay what is actually owed. Often, we use the insurance company’s own tactics against them as we fight for the full compensation our client deserves.
For more than four decades, Keith has been fighting for injury victims. During that time, he’s watched the insurance industry change, with insurers now more interested in protecting their stock price than treating injury victims fairly.
Since the beginning, Keith has put people first. From his childhood in Gary, Indiana during the 1960’s and working his way through law school, Keith has risen to become one of the Midwest’s most respected trial lawyers. He has never forgotten that being a lawyer is about helping people -- and seeing injury victims through struggles in a way that could change their lives forever.
Over the decades, Keith, Don and Jason have fought relentlessly for clients, even when other lawyers have said the case was impossible to win.
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Wruck Paupore P.C.
Injury Lawyers
275 Joliet St. Suite #250
Dyer, IN 46311
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