Nashville Personal Injury Attorneys

Calculating damages for your Nashville personal injury case

There is no limit to claiming economic damages because the amount of money your injury has cost you can be added up.

Non-economic damages, however, don’t have a quantifiable number. They are usually calculated by taking your economic damages and multiplying it by a number between 1 and 5. The problem arises when an insurance company wants to assign one number, but your attorney believes it should be another number.

EXAMPLE: You have $100,000 in economic damages after you sustain a traumatic brain injury. Using the formula, your non-economic damages will likely be between $100,000 and $500,000.

But there’s a catch: Tennessee has placed a cap on non-economic damages. Using the same brain injury example, your non-economic damages could be limited to $750,000 in total. So, even if your TBI costs you $10,000,000 in economic damages, you can still only collect $750,000 in non-economic damages. The only exception to this rule is if your injury is deemed “catastrophic,” in which case the cap is raised to $1 million. Catastrophic injuries include:

• Spinal cord injuries that lead to quadriplegia or paraplegia
• Amputation of both hands, both feet, or one hand and one foot
• Third degree burns on at least 40% of your body
• The wrongful death of a minor child/children

Until recently, punitive damages were also capped in Tennessee. However, a ruling by the 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals in December of 2018 found that this cap was unconstitutional. As of now, punitive damages are no longer capped.