Machine Calculation of Pain and Suffering

I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

With the rise of AI machines it’s likely that insurance companies have secured the services of such a computer and are using it, or will soon use it, to try to calculate pain-and-suffering damages relating to injury claims.

When there is an injury claim, some types of damages are easily calculable. These damages are traditionally referred to as special damages.

What exactly are special damages? Things that you can calculate such as medical bills, income lost from being unable to work, property repair costs, and other out-of-pocket expenses.

General damages are different from special damages.

General damages include such things as pain-and-suffering, physical and mental discomfort, emotional distress, anxiety linked to the accident or injuries.

The question is can a computer be used to accurately place a dollar value on pain? And if you did have such a computer, what information would you feed into the computer to make such a calculation?

What insurance companies often attempt to do to value pain and suffering, is to plug-in information about special damages into a computer system, and have the computer calculate a projection of what value a jury might assign to a claim.

Keep in mind, in many cases special damages have no logical correlation to pain and suffering. For example, consider a 30 year old woman who has to have a leg amputated below the knee due to an injury. It might cost $5,000 to amputate the leg, but the lifetime pain and suffering and inability to function as normal, likely would be valued by a human on a jury in the millions of dollars.

Nevertheless, using a computer programmed to use special damage figures to calculate general damages may appeal to an insurance company that wants to make a simple evaluation of a claim.

But, what numbers get fed to a computer?

Is the computer told to look at the medical bills charged? Or, should the computer consider what was paid on the actual bills after write-offs?

Most medical bills get reduced by the result of a health insurance contract reduction provision, or a government imposed reduction.

For example Medicare might see a bill from the surgeon for $100,000, but pay the surgeon only $5000. A health insurance provider might look at a $100,000 surgery bill, and through some written agreement, pay the surgeon only $25,000.

Another number that this type of computer system will examine is a daily dollar rate assigned to the number of days a person experiences pain, or the number of days they could not work.

What happens next is the computer program adds up all the numbers and tries to project from those numbers what a jury might decide is the value of the claim.

For example, let’s assume that the numbers in the categories we just discussed add up to $15,000. Whoever programs a computer may decide that pain should be considered to be 1.5 times the total, and another computer system might be programmed to decide that 3.5 times that total is what could be expected to be awarded by a jury. Neither computer may be right, and neither computer system will be even remotely close to what a human jury would decide.

After these types of calculations are made other factors come in. Another typical factor would be to look at the projection of fault for the accident that resulted in the injury. Another factor might be whether the injuries are objectively observable, or whether the injuries are subjective and rely only on the report of the injured party.

If a person suffered a scar or they are permanently damaged for life, such factors come into play.

The problem with a computer program like this is that there is no mechanism to take into effect all the factors that a human being would take into effect as that human being sits on a jury and listens to all of the evidence and evaluates the witnesses.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

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