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A lawsuit may be the best option for personal injury victims in Indiana to recover compensation after someone else caused the accident that harmed them. If you are considering filing a personal injury lawsuit, you likely have questions about how much you stand to recover.
Indiana’s statutory caps may affect your recovery. Several types of damage caps in Indiana apply in certain situations, such as medical malpractice or suits where a government entity is a defendant, or to certain types of compensation, such as punitive damages.
Call our Indiana personal injury attorneys at Wruck Paupore at (219) 322-1166 and ask for a free, private legal assessment to begin your case.
To understand how the various damage caps in Indiana apply, it is important to understand how the damages they affect are calculated. Damages can be separated into two general categories: compensatory damages and punitive damages. Some damage caps take this difference into account, so it is important to understand what each entails.
Compensatory damages are meant to provide an equitable monetary remedy to the plaintiff in light of the harm they sustained. In most cases, compensatory damages encompass the entirety of what is available.
Within compensatory damages are two separate categories of damages: economic and non-economic. Economic damages speak to the financial loss resulting from the plaintiff’s injuries, such as medical bills or lost income. Non-economic damages are based more on the impact that the incident and resulting injuries have had on the plaintiff’s quality of life. These types of damages include pain and suffering, mental anguish, and diminished enjoyment of life.
While compensatory damages are typically available in every type of successful personal injury lawsuit, punitive damages are much less common. An Indiana court will only award punitive damages if they find the defendant’s conduct so reckless or intentionally malicious that it warrants punishment on top of the compensatory damages they already should owe.
Some circumstances where punitive damages may be considered include drunk driving accidents, defective products that the manufacturer knew about, and intentional violence, such as assault.
Your economic damages are your losses and injuries that may be measured and proven in terms of how much they cost. These are often a major component of civil lawsuits, especially when plaintiffs incur substantial expenses because of the defendant’s negligence.
Economic damages are not capped by statutes in Indiana. A plaintiff may recover all the economic damages that they can prove in court. It does not matter how high your claims are for economic damages. If you can prove these costs and directly connect them with the defendant’s negligence, you should be awarded the full extent of their value.
In short, the only real limit on economic damages is your ability to prove them with evidence.
Economic damages require proof of financial cost. For example, if a plaintiff wants to claim medical bills for the treatment they received after being injured in an accident caused by the defendant, they should provide copies of the bills or invoices they received from the hospital.
Economic damages are not always clear-cut, and they are sometimes open to interpretation. For example, if you are suing a defendant who caused a car accident and totaled your recently restored vintage sports car, the value of your car may be up for debate.
Defendants may argue that plaintiffs have overestimated the value of their economic damages or that the evidence does not support their claims for economic damages. If the court agrees, your economic damages may be reduced, so our Indiana personal injury attorneys must present the strongest possible evidence.
Non-economic damages are arguably harder to quantify because they do not reflect specific sums of money but rather subjective personal experiences. As such, they tend to face more legal limitations than economic damages.
Like economic damages, there are no statutory caps on non-economic damages in Indiana. Generally, plaintiffs may claim whatever non-economic damages they deem appropriate, and they may be awarded those that they can prove in court.
However, non-economic damages are much more open to interpretation, and a jury has the final say on their value.
Non-economic damages take various forms and come up in various cases. While there are no caps on non-economic damages generally, special cases may involve statutory caps.
For example, punitive damages, which may be awarded as a punishment for defendants whose behavior meets certain legal criteria, are capped. As described in more detail below, punitive damages are capped at $50,000 or triple the value of the total economic damages, whichever is greater.
There are also caps placed on punitive damages in medical malpractice cases and lawsuits against governmental entities. These caps are in place because society has a significant interest in keeping healthcare and governmental institutions financially afloat.
A common method is the per diem method. Using this method, a specific value is attached to each day that you experience non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering. For example, we might argue that you should receive $300 for each day you endure pain and suffering from the accident and injuries caused by the defendant. The longer you endured these experiences, the greater your non-economic damages.
Another common method is the multiplier method. This method requires determining a multiplier by which your total economic damages are multiplied to determine the value of non-economic damages.
For example, we may argue that your multiplier figure should be 3, and your total economic damages should be multiplied by 3. If you prove claims for $50,000 in economic damages, your non-economic damages would come out to $150,000.
The upper limits of non-economic damages claims may depend on how the court in your case decides to calculate them.
It is important to separate compensatory and punitive damages because Indiana law places a cap only on what personal injury plaintiffs can claim in punitive damages. Not only that, but this statutory limit is based in part upon the total amount of compensatory damages.
Under Indiana law, punitive damages are capped at three times the total compensatory damages or $50,000, whichever is higher. For example, if the court awarded a plaintiff $25,000 in compensatory damage, the most they could receive additionally in punitive damages would be $75,000.
If the same plaintiff received only $15,000 in compensatory damages, they could still recover up to $50,000 in punitive damages, even though that amount exceeds three times their compensatory damages ($45,000).
Although not technically a cap, it is also important to understand that only 25% of the total award of punitive damages goes to the victim, as it is deemed a penalty (similar to a fine) rather than compensation. The rest of the award goes to the State of Indiana for a fund established to help crime victims.
In cases where punitive damages are available, it is important to have an idea of your compensatory damages first so that you can fully understand what your case may be worth. This is particularly important when considering potential settlement offers.
While you may only receive a part of a punitive damage award, the defendant is required to pay the full amount, which allows a potential avenue for negotiation. Never agree to the terms of a settlement without having your Indiana personal injury attorney assess the offer and discuss your options with you first.
Like many other states, Indiana limits the amount that can be awarded in a medical malpractice case, which occurs when a health care provider deviates from the professional standard of care and causes harm to their patient.
In Indiana, the total amount recoverable by law for medical malpractice cases that occurred before June 30, 2019, is $1.65 million. On that date, a new law raised the cap on applicable damages to $1.8 million.
The cap that applies to you depends on the date you sustained your injury. This may not always be so clear in medical malpractice cases, so reach out to an experienced Hammond personal injury attorney if you have questions about what limits may apply to your situation.
It is possible to file a lawsuit against governmental entities or agencies, but the damages available in such cases will be more limited.
For personal injury lawsuits against the government in the State of Indiana, the total amount of recoverable damages is capped at $700,000. This may apply to any situation in which the party you are suing is a government agency.
For instance, if you slipped and fell on poorly maintained public property, or if you were involved in an accident with a sanitation truck or a public bus, your case would be against the state or municipal agency responsible.
If you plan to name a government agency in a lawsuit, you should also take special care to address any notice requirements. Depending on the government agency, most plaintiffs have only a limited time to notify that agency that they intend to sue.
This is separate from filing your actual lawsuit. An experienced Indianapolis personal injury lawyer will be familiar with the notice requirements you are facing and can help you meet them so long as you reach out as soon as possible after suffering your injury.
Indiana wrongful death actions have their own set of requirements of what can and cannot be recovered, which depends upon the age of the victim, whether they were a dependent of another person, or if an adult, whether they were married or had dependents of their own. We cover caps and the types of damages recoverable in Indiana wrongful death actions in this article.
Damages in wrongful death cases must comply with the special restrictions imposed by state statutes. Plaintiffs suing for the wrongful death of an adult person may not recover any damages related to grief over the loss of their loved one. Similarly, punitive damages are not available.
In cases where the deceased person is an adult person, damages for the loss of the deceased person’s love and companionship may not exceed $300,000.
A jury will not be informed of the cap before deliberation, so they could return a damages award that exceeds it. In that case, the court will likely reduce the award to the maximum cap of $300,000.
Caps are limitations placed on the total amount of damages a person may claim in a civil lawsuit. In Indiana, there are no statutory caps on economic damages or general non-economic damages, but that does not mean these damages are totally unlimited. Your damages may still be limited to only what you can prove with evidence in court.
There are statutory caps on non-economic damages in certain types of cases, such as those involving healthcare institutions or governmental entities. Punitive damages are also capped.
No. In Indiana, economic and non-economic damages are generally not capped by statute, except in special circumstances. For the most part, a plaintiff can claim whatever damages they can prove, so long as they have enough evidence.
Although economic and non-economic damages are generally not capped by statute, they are still subject to certain limitations. You may claim any amount of economic damages, but you may only be awarded the damages you can prove with evidence in court. Non-economic damages are similarly limited to only what you can prove, but their value may be calculated using a variety of methods, which may vary from case to case.
There are no statutory caps on non-economic damages for things like pain and suffering, but you cannot claim more than what you can prove. However, caps exist for certain kinds of non-economic damages or in specific kinds of cases.
Punitive damages are capped at 3 times the value of economic damages or $50,000, whichever is higher. Non-economic damages are also capped in cases involving medical malpractice or those filed against governmental entities.
Call our Hammond, IN personal injury lawyers at Wruck Paupore at (219) 322-1166 and ask for a free, confidential legal assessment to begin your 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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