Welcome and thank you, for joining me. I am Gerry Oginski in New York Medical Malpractice. I am Personal Injury Trail Lawyer practicing law here in the state of New York. Today's video tip, this is something I want to address with you that's a common defense used by lawyers representing doctors and hospitals and people who are sued, and they use this defense at trial to try and explain to a jury, look, what difference does it make whether you give them money or not? The money is not going to change how they are physically. So Why give them a million dollars? Why give them $5 million ? It's not going to change anything. And here is the response to that.
The reason why you bring a lawsuit is to obtain compensation. It literally is about the money. But the compensation what is it? It's a debt that occurs as a result of an injury to you or someone that's been injured, and it's a debt that must be repaid. So the moment you suffer an injury whether because of an accident, whether because of medical wrong doing or something else. Once somebody has done something wrong they now incur a debt that must be repaid to you, that's what known as compensation.
So let's say, for example hypothetically that you owned a Picasso painting that was worth $5 million, that painting was destroyed and now you go to the insurance company and say look this painting was $5 million, you have to pay me $5 million, and they will. Assuming you have an insurance policy for that amount, they are obligated to pay you the value of that painting.
Let's say you owned a horse and the horse suffered some type of injury and it was valuated at $10 million. Again, if the horse suffered an injury because of someone's wrong doing, they are obligated to pay you the value of that. Now let's take a look at an injury that you have suffered. There is pain and suffering, there is lost income, there is lost wages, there is future loss income and a number of other factors that go into evaluating your damages and this is what we say to the Jury when a defense lawyer brings up this argument, and we tell them you are absolutely right. This money is not going to make this person better because nothing in the world is going to make this person better.
You have caused an injury that caused permanent damaged and permanent harm and now this person is going to have to live it with a disability for the rest of their entire life. And in all livelihood they are going to live for another 20, 30 or may be 40 years with this disability. So what about their medical expenses? Who is going to pay for that? What about the bills that are going to incur for physical therapy, for rehabilitation, for additional doctor's visits. Should their own health insurance have to pay for that? Why? Why shouldn't the wrong doer be responsible for paying for all their medical expenses? Suppose they need additional surgery sometime in the future or multiple surgeries, who should have to pay for that? Why should the wrong doer be allowed off the hook and not have to pay for something that may caused, it's their doing that my client needs to have this treatment. Had it not been for their carelessness, my client never would have had to go through this terrible tragedy.
We are not here asking for a hand out, we are here asking for justice. We want not half justice but full justice, and the only way that full justice can be obtained is by fully and fairly compensating my client. So when we talk about compensation, we talk about what we called economic damages which are things that we can easily calculate such as lost earnings, lost future earnings, lost perks and benefits on a particular job, those we can easily calculate.
But what about the things that we can't easily calculate, something we called pain and suffering. That's very subjective, which means that there is no way to put a precise price on your pain and suffering. Why not? Because everybody's pain and suffering is different. You will deal with your pain differently than someone else. A 25 year old is going to deal with pain differently than a 85 year old. And the amount of medications that's needed and the amount of treatment or surgery that's needed for different injuries are different. So what will the compensation do?
Compensating is going to allow that individual to live for the rest of their life knowing that their bills are going to be paid, knowing that if they need a particular device, let's say, a wheel chair or some other orthopedic device or prosthetic or a ramp going up to their home or modifications to their home, because of their disability, that those item will be taken care of. Let's say that the person who is injured has children and this person can no longer work because of their disability. That money, that compensation is going to help pay for their child's education, going to help pay when they go to college. It's going to help pay for their mortgage so that they don't get kicked out of their home with a disable parent, knowing that they can't put food on the table for their family.
These are the type of damages that we see when someone has been injured through the fault of someone else. And that's what compensation is used for. It is not a lottery ticket, it's not a win full, and it's not asking for sympathy. Asking for full and fair compensation, nothing more, nothing less. And that's it for today's video tip, I want to thank you for joining me. I am Gerry Oginski, have a great day.
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