How Do Lawsuits Get So Much Money?
Michael Babboni
Law
While it doesn't happen for the vast majority of lawsuits, a litigation case will make the news headlines on rare occasions. One common reason for this is the amounts involved, such as the infamous McDonald's lawsuit back in 1994. The Liebeck v. McDonald's case, more popularly known as the "hot coffee lawsuit," was widely covered by the press because a woman successfully sued the famous McDonald's fast-food corporation for spilling some coffee on her lap.While the initial amounts sought for—and agreed upon by the jury—were nearly three million dollars in total damages, the final amount awarded was about $640,000. But the "hot coffee lawsuit" is just one of a few examples over the years where a lawsuit entails millions of dollars to a plaintiff.
How are these amounts determined?
Every Case Is Different
First, it's important to note that these cases with millions of dollars at stake are not the norm. They are the exception; the amounts involved are one reason why the news regularly features such stories, lending an overblown sense of just how common such high stakes lawsuits are.
Every case is evaluated on its own merits. When it comes to determining amounts in a personal injury lawsuit, the most significant factor is medical expenses. This variable is easy to calculate since the costs come directly from experts at a medical facility that can assign a "price tag" to the treatment. Someone suing for personal injury for whiplash treatment in a car accident will arrive at a different amount from someone that is suing for brain damage for a child crippled by gunfire when two children, unsupervised, were left to play with a firearm sitting unattended on a coffee table.
The Aftermath
Aside from the fixed cost of the medical treatment, another factor to consider is whether there are long terms consequences of the injury or not. Once again, a whiplash injury in a car accident is, by and large, a recoverable injury. Once the muscle strain heals up, an accident victim can resume an everyday life, taking up where they left off with personal and professional obligations. In other words, some injuries are interruptions to a daily lifestyle, but nothing more than that.
Other injuries are, unfortunately, more permanent. Someone paralyzed from the waist down, for example, will have to adjust to a whole new lifestyle involving a wheelchair and make changes to a home to accommodate a wheelchair-centric lifestyle. In some cases, such as construction-related jobs, it may no longer be possible to resume an established career if the injury makes returning to work no longer feasible.
In these cases, additional costs for the lawsuit are added in as further compensation on top of the medical treatment. After all, if a person, through the negligence of someone else, can no longer live their previous life or even earn a salary the way they used to, the person who deprived them of all should be held accountable.
Making An Example
Finally, the factor that often determines whether a lawsuit goes into the tens of millions or even the hundreds of millions is whether it merits "punitive damages." As the name suggests, punitive damages are when an amount is sought not just to equalize things and restore a balance of compensation but to go a step further and punish someone.
This is often done when a plaintiff decides to make a public example of someone, and the court and jury agree that some public statement needs to be made to decry an action and serve as a warning to others to avoid repeating the act if they don't' want to face the same severe financial consequences. Lawsuits centered on wrongful death, sometimes with children involved, are examples of punitive damage lawsuits. Even the "hot coffee lawsuit" initially pegged at $2.86 million had those additional millions added as punitive damages.
If someone else's negligence has injured you, you should always talk to a personal injury lawyer about how to get the compensation you're legally owed. However, if you're the victim of an extraordinary accident, there may be a chance that punitive damages are on the table, and you can sue for far more than just the required medical treatment expenses.