What Damages Can You Recover in a Maryland Car Accident Case?

Two people can suffer nearly identical injuries in a Maryland car accident and walk away with very different settlement numbers. Why? Because the value of a claim rarely comes down to a single figure. It is built from several distinct categories of loss, each calculated differently, and one of them comes with a hard legal ceiling.

Losses You Can Put a Number On

Some damages are easy to prove because they already come with documentation attached. Medical bills, both already incurred and reasonably expected in the future, fall into this bucket. So does lost income from time away from work, along with reduced future earning capacity if the injury limits what kind of work is possible going forward. Vehicle repair costs and incidental expenses, like mileage to physical therapy, round out this category. Because pay stubs, invoices, and receipts back these figures up, insurance companies rarely dispute the math itself, though they frequently dispute whether every expense was actually necessary.

Losses That Do Not Show Up on a Bill

Pain does not come with a price tag, yet Maryland law still requires a way to compensate for it. Maryland Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings Section 11-108 defines this category, called non-economic damages, to include pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, loss of consortium, and other nonpecuniary injury. Since none of this can be calculated from a receipt, value gets estimated based on the severity of the injury, expert input, and how similar injuries have been valued in past cases.

The Ceiling Most People Never Hear About

This is the part that surprises even people well into their case. Maryland caps non-economic damages, and that cap climbs by $15,000 every October 1st to keep pace with inflation. Economic losses like medical bills and lost wages face no such ceiling and are recoverable in full. One more wrinkle: juries deciding a case are never told the cap exists. They award whatever amount they believe is fair, and only afterward does a court step in to reduce any award that exceeds the statutory limit.

What Pushes a Non-Economic Award Higher or Lower

• How permanent or severe the injury turns out to be
• The practical impact on relationships, work, and daily routines
• The length and intensity of the required medical treatment
• How well documented the connection is between the accident and the injury

Find Out What a Maryland Claim Might Actually Be Worth

Every category of damages depends on the specific facts of the crash and the injury involved, which makes a generic estimate nearly useless. The Law Office of Vanessa R. Dozier, Esq. helps injured clients throughout Maryland evaluate every available category of compensation. Call or message the office today, and one of the firm’s Maryland car accident attorneys can walk through what your accident may actually be worth.