Richard Duquette’s job is to get his clients’ money. Money is justice. When you’re injured, you lose more than personal property, hospital bills and time off work. There is a value assigned to a loss of a bicyclists lifestyle. Richard helps you determine Valuing the Loss of a Bicycling Lifestyle in two episodes.
Economic damages are hard losses such as lost earnings, life-care plan, and medical bills which must be paid back as out of-pocket expenses. These damages are called special damages because they are easily quantified and highly specific in nature. They are proven by actual medical bills and verified lost earnings.
Non-Economic damages are far more extensive. They are the human losses. This includes your lost enjoyment of bicycling, pain and suffering, psychological damages, and the many other ways that an injury detrimentally affects someone’s quality of life.
These can involve a wide variety of mental, emotional, and physical deficits and can affect bicyclist’s enjoyment of an equally wide variety of their previous activities.
Proving non-economic damages is a highly technical form of storytelling. The goal is to
paint a picture of the bicyclist’s life before the crash, and contrast it with after the crash. Remember that damage awards are about making the bicylist whole—this means compensating them for their losses.
Law and Economics scholars call non-economic damages “hedonic damages” (from the same root as “hedonism”) because they quite literally seek to quantify and compensate for a loss of happiness or pleasure.
To hear how painting the picture, lay witnesses and causation affect Valuing the Loss of a Bicycling Lifestyle Pt.1, download and listen to the episode.
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