Broken Bone Settlement Amount

A broken bone is a serious injury.

If you have broken a bone in an accident that was not your fault, you could be entitled to take action against the person who caused your injury. Filing a personal injury lawsuit provides an opportunity to recover compensation beyond your insurance policy’s limits, but calculating the value of a settlement is anything but easy.

Since broken bones can range in severity from being almost-unnoticeable to painful and debilitating, they do not have a single, agreed-upon value. Instead, your potential damages are largely dependent on how your injury has affected your life.

An Overview Of Broken Bone Injuries

The terms “broken bone” and “fracture” are interchangeable.

Just about every bone in the body can be broken, although some are much more vulnerable than others. In a car accident, these points of vulnerability correspond to the parts of the body most likely to be affected by a collision. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. The ribs;
2. Arm and wrist bones like the radius and ulna;
3. The long bones in your legs, such as the tibia, fibula, and femur;
4. The pelvis and hips; and
5. Your spinal column and vertebrae.

Each of these injuries affects a different part of the body and requires different treatment. Furthermore, even the type of treatment you receive could be influenced by other accident-related complications. In general, it takes much longer for large, complex fractures to heal than comparatively simple breaks. Longer recovery times tend to equate to greater feelings of pain and more significant financial losses.

Somebody suing over a hairline fracture will, under most circumstances, be entitled to a smaller settlement than an accident victim whose injuries keep them bedridden for months on end.

3 Factors That Could Affect Your Settlement

Since the term “fracture” can be used to describe so many different kinds of injuries, it is all but impossible to calculate the average or median settlement amount; there are simply too many variables to account for. Instead, your total compensation will likely be influenced by a confluence of factors.

These most often include:

1. The Type of Fracture

Fractures come in many forms, but broken bones that involve multiple sites of injury or exposed fragments of bone are more likely to cause pain and result in complications.

2. Your Total Recovery Time

Recovery times are not set in stone, and some people take much longer to get better than others with similar injuries. You might take longer to recover if:

1. You are an older adult;
2. You have a pre-existing health condition that affects your bones or musculoskeletal system; and
3. You sustained other injuries in conjunction with a fracture.

Most broken bones take anywhere between several weeks and several months to heal, but more complete and complex breakages can necessitate intensive treatment lasting the better part of an entire year. This means more money for treatment, more stress in day-to-day life, and, potentially, an increased risk of developing chronic pain.

3. How Your Injury Has Affected Your Mental and Physical Health

Personal injury settlements are usually comprised of two distinct components: economic and non-economic damages. Your economic damages reflect your existing and anticipated financial losses. Non-economic damages, in contrast, can help compensate more subjective forms of pain and suffering. If a broken bone prevents you from living the same life you had before the accident, that counts for something, and it should be reflected in any proposed settlement.

Call Jed Dietrich, Esq., today at 716-839-3939 to speak to a personal injury lawyer and schedule your 100% free, no-obligation consultation as soon as possible.

Call the Dietrich Law Firm P.C. immediately at 716-839-3939 so that our aggressive, tenacious, and hardworking personal injury lawyers can fight to obtain the best result for your personal injury claim in Buffalo, New York. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and there is never a fee until we WIN for you!