How To Compute Hedonic Damages
Aside from the possible loss of income and amounting medical expenses
, a personal injury may also cost you things that normally have no monetary value.
In most states, most of these non-monetary losses are accounted as part of pain and suffering.
However, in California, some courts recognize that serious personal injuries have a way to disrupt a persons life.
It could cost a person the potential to live his life the way he envisioned it to be.
That is why aside from pain and suffering, you can also claim for what civil law calls hedonic damages.
Hedonic damages is actually an economic term that is used in tort law to represent the loss of enjoyment of life.
The best thing about life is the way that people can live it to the fullest.
If the ability to perform things that give you satisfaction is taken away from you, you should be able to get compensation for the loss you have suffered in the same way that you should be compensated for other losses like lost salary and medical expenses.
Some examples of hedonic damages are:
Loss of ability to participate in sports
Loss of sensory experiences
Loss of unencumbered movement
Loss of ability to have biological children
Calculating hedonic damages though can be very complicated.
The supposed concept behind it is that life is more valuable to a person than any money he or she can earn.
In fact, people earn money to make life enjoyable.
However, the problem is that there is no exact way to place a dollar value on pleasure or satisfaction.
What the courts have come up with is a formula to determine how much a person values his or her life.
To compute hedonic damages, most courts use the Willingness to Pay Concept or WTP.
The WTP represents the amount of money you are willing to spend in order to decrease the risk of death.
This could include the purchase of safety equipments such as smoke detectors, security systems, carbon monoxide detectors, installation of iron grills on windows, etc.
It would include all the efforts and money you spend to demonstrate your desire to keep yourself safe and avoid death.
From that number, experts would be able to give an amount on how much you value your life.
Once you have your WTP value, experts will now determine how much enjoyment of life you lost.
To determine loss, you may be asked to undergo a psychological evaluation.
The evaluation would generally include:
Occupational functioning
Practical functioning
Emotional functioning
Social functioning
From that, experts should be able to determine the percentage of how much you lost based on the value of your WTP.
You and your personal injury attorney can file a claim to recover that percentage from the court.
by: Mark Dacanay
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