Any child injury is a terrible thing. When a child is injured as a result of negligence in a healthcare setting, the lingering psychological trauma and physical damage can be devastating. Calculating damages in child injury lawsuits presents unique challenges compared with cases in which the only claimants are adults, primarily because so much of a child’s future remains to be decided. A conversation with a compassionate New Mexico attorney may help you to gain a stronger sense of perspective on how your child injury case may need to proceed. Reach out to Erin Marshall Law at 505-218-9949 today to set up an appointment with a member of our experienced team.
Personal Injuries and Civil Torts: The Basics
No matter whether they involve pediatric or adult care, medical malpractice claims constitute a type of personal injury case. Personal injury cases themselves belong to the realm of civil torts, an area of law dedicated to making sure that individuals who are harmed through others’ torts – which, as the Legal Information Institute (LII) explains, amount to wrongs – have an opportunity for pursuing remedy through the courts.
Sometimes the plaintiffs in civil lawsuits frame their claims as a way of holding wrongdoing to account, even when those who have done harm are not subject to criminal charges. This perception is understandable and even in some instances aligns with the experiences of both defendants and plaintiffs, but it is a limited point of view that leaves out of consideration an important difference between the purpose of a criminal trial vs. a personal injury lawsuit.
Setting Examples and Enforcing Consequences: The Function of Criminal Trials
A criminal trial aims to prove that the defendant violated one or more of a jurisdiction’s laws and to apply a penalty the court considers proportionate to the crime, as some crimes have mandatory sentencing guidelines that courts must follow. The goal, usually, is to discourage not just this defendant, but anyone else in the jurisdiction, from committing similar violations in the future, by showing that getting caught leads to undesirable consequences. Victims and their families may sometimes derive a degree of satisfaction from the feeling that justice has been served, but a conviction in a criminal trial is generally unlikely to have a direct impact on a victim’s material circumstances.
“As You Were”: Civil Torts Law and the Legal Framework of Victim Compensation
Civil cases are different. Although civil courts may occasionally order punitive damages in cases where a defendant’s conduct appears especially reckless or otherwise “beyond the pale,” the real purpose of a personal injury claim is to restore the injured party as nearly as possible to the position they were in before the tort. Primarily, this restoration is achieved through awards of compensatory damages.
Monetary damages of this type are intended to provide successful plaintiffs with the financial means to recover from medical expenses, missed work opportunities, and similar losses directly attributable to the defendant’s tortious actions (or inaction). State laws generally dictate parameters within which these damages must be calculated; in New Mexico, an important component of the statutory framework is provided by the “caps” set in N.M. § 41-5-6, which limits the amounts recoverable for individual instances of medical malpractice.
Money Cannot Buy Back a Damaged Childhood: The Emotional Challenge of Child Injury Lawsuits
Many parents struggle with the idea of seeking compensation when their child is injured, particularly when the parents can see that child injuries have been the preventable result of someone else’s negligence, and even more so when that someone is a trusted party, such as a physician or other provider of pediatric healthcare. How could mere money ever make up for the harms, even accidental harms, a child has suffered? When child injuries result in negative long-term – perhaps permanent – effects, the entire premise can feel untenable.
In the legal realm, however, financial damages are the primary means by which families can hold healthcare providers to account for medical negligence that results in child injuries. Calculating these damages accurately can be key to achieving a favorable outcome in court. Unfortunately, the calculation of damages in child injury cases can be challenging for reasons beyond the parents’ emotional involvement. At Erin Marshall Law, we understand these complexities and make it a point to interview the family in a child injury case thoroughly in order to get a detailed picture of all the factors involved in each unique situation.
Damages in Personal Injury Cases Involving Adults
When an adult suffers from adverse health outcomes as the result of medical negligence, often the calculation of economic damages will take into account not just the added medical expenses needed to try and repair the (physical) damage caused by a delayed diagnosis or inappropriate or inadequate treatment, but also the cost of lost income due to time the individual must spend away from work, whether the time missed is spent directly receiving medical care or in post-treatment recovery and healing (many cases see a mix of both).
For non-economic damages, as well, most adults have relatively well-established patterns of personal habits, daily routines, and close relationships that make it possible to achieve at least a rough idea of how the lingering consequences of medical negligence may be likely to affect their lives, in the present moment and over time. Although the variables present in any particular case can always present their own complications, generally the calculation of damages for adult injuries begins from a basis of “knowns” that are relatively stable.
Counting the Cost of a Damaged Childhood: Why the Calculation of Damages in Child Injury Lawsuits Is Complex
Calculating damages in a child injury lawsuit can be orders of magnitude more complex than the comparable operation in a case involving only adults. Particularly when there is reason to believe that the child injury may have long-lasting physical, mental, and emotional repercussions, it can be extremely challenging to quantify the damage done in a case of medical negligence that injures a child. While adult injuries can certainly present numerous challenges in the computation of damages – especially the non-economic damages that can easily assume deep importance in medical negligence lawsuits – a case in which an adult suffers harm normally starts from an established “baseline.” The principle behind personal injury claims, of restoring an individual who has been wrongfully harmed by another’s actions to his or her pre-injury state, has a clear point at which to aim, and a yardstick for measuring whether the objective has been achieved.
Childhood development moves too quickly for restoring a child to his or her exact pre-injury state to be practical, or even desirable, in all but the most rapidly resolved claims. In most cases, the calculation of damages is likely to depend partly on restoring the potential the child had for healthy, uninterrupted development. Since nothing can truly “restore” the damage done to a childhood in some cases, the court may attempt to make up for the loss of that potential with the financial means to achieve outcomes similar to those they might have had.
While the immediate, already-tangible expenses associated with medical treatment and the like may be readily quantified, predictions about how many further expenses may be entailed in the future as a result of the same child injury can present numerous challenges. As a result, child injury lawsuits often involve an exceptionally high degree of involvement from expert witnesses, who give testimony to provide context for how to understand not just the child’s current status but the range of probable outcomes based on knowledge of similar patient histories.
Speak With a Child Injury Lawyer
Calculating damages in child injury lawsuits can be an undertaking far more complex than the structurally similar computations that form an essential part of most medical negligence cases involving only adults. Working with a malpractice attorney experienced in handling child injury medical negligence cases may make it easier to navigate these complexities and persuasively document evidence of the full compensation your child deserves. Call Erin Marshall Law today at 505-218-9949 to schedule a consultation to discuss your case.
