Legal Question in Personal Injury in North Carolina

Re: Insurance claim for car accident

There is no hard-and-fast rule for your damages. You are entitled to your medical expenses, lost earnings, any other "special damages," and "pain and suffering." The non-economic damages are difficult to ascertain. If you had only injuries for a couple of days, then you may not get much more than the expenses (e.g. 1.1 times medicals). If, however, you have permanent injuries, then you could recover several times the medical expenses. (There is an old rule-of-thumb about a case being worth three times the medical expenses. You can run a Google search on that for some info. But it's not highly reliable.) The determination is very case-specific. This is why it is often advisable to retain an attorney. Finally, a note on liability: it is conceivable that you could be found contributorily negligent for riding with an intoxicated driver. There is law in North Carolina that if a person knowingly and voluntarily enters a vehicle with an impaired driver, that person may be "contributorily negligent" such that they cannot recover at all. Further, if the driver is dangerous, the passenger may have a duty to try to exit the vehicle.