Legal Question in Personal Injury in California

Pain and suffering?

This is the situation, a guy is suing the restaurant for hokig on a chicken bone that was found in a chicken enchilada. He is suing to pay his medical, psychiatric, and speech therapist bills as well as an extra 1 million for pain and suffering. So he is suing for a total of 2, 500,000. The guy has an expert witness to testify on behalf of his future costs of going to these specialized doctors.

I want to know How do you estimate costs for pain and suffering? How do you convert pain in suffering into a sum of monies? What are the conditions?

What is the range of the costs to have an expert witness testify?

can the court award monies to a person that doesn't know if he/she may/may not need that medical or psychiatric help in the future?


Asked on 3/09/00, 4:48 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
John Hayes The John Hayes Law Offices

Re: Pain and suffering?

The value of pain and suffering is based on several factors. Some of which are: Is he going to have problems for the rest of his life? How has this affected his life so far? Will he be able to continue the quality of living he had before the incident? And so on and so on. The monetary value of pain and suffering differs in every case. As far as the cost of an expert witness, this can range from $1,000 to $50,000 depending on the Doctor's specialty, what he is testifying about and for how long. The future medical bills are based on how much treatment his doctors' think he will need in the future. Hopefully he won't need it, but the money needs to be there to cover them. The fact is, if this incident hadn't happened he would still be living his life, but it did happen and now his life is forever changed and will likely never be the same again.

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Answered on 3/22/00, 10:27 pm


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