What Is A Pain And Suffering Multiplier? (April 2025)

What Is Pain and Suffering?

“Pain and suffering” is the non-legal term for non-economic losses. These losses include all the non-financial ways your injuries affected your life. The following types of losses are often included when evaluating your non-economic losses:

• Physical pain
• Mental suffering
• Emotional distress
• Physical or mental disability
• Dismemberment
• Disfigurement

Unfortunately, insurers and at-fault parties often look at pain and suffering skeptically. They may think that these losses are simply the victim’s way of padding their claim to try to inflate the compensation they receive. However, these losses are real, and this compensation sought helps to make up for them.

Why the Law Awards Pain and Suffering Compensation

The first principle to understand is that personal injury claims are not intended to result in a windfall to the injured person. Instead, a claim is supposed to put them in the position they were in before the incident that injured them. This concept generally applies to intentional tort, negligence and strict liability tort claims.

You can easily see how this principle works for economic losses. For example, if you spend $10,000 on medical bills after an injury, you should receive $10,000 in compensation from the person or business responsible for causing it.

The same principle applies to non-economic losses, although the application can be less clear because of their non-financial nature. The purpose of pain and suffering is to provide monetary compensation for the human cost of the injuries.

Pain erodes your happiness and causes misery. Suffering can keep you awake at night and produce anxiety, depression and distress. Disabilities and dismemberment can affect your ability to live independently, work or participate in activities you enjoy, while disfigurement may alter how you are perceived and how you perceive yourself due to scars or amputations.

These losses can affect your quality of your life. Since the law cannot restore your quality of life, it awards financial compensation.

Calculating Pain and Suffering

Despite a long history of awarding non-economic compensation, the law often provides little guidance on the amount. In many states, jurors are advised by the court to use their common sense, sense of fairness and experience to put a value on the injured person’s pain and suffering.

However, some general principles can help jurors assess a concrete value. For instance, pain and suffering losses are unique in every case.

The pain and suffering compensation someone else received in their truck accident lawsuit might not be relevant to your case. As a result, jurors must keep in mind that the factors in valuing this compensation are so personalized that people who suffered the same injuries from the same defective products might still recover different amounts.

Similarly, more severe injuries usually cause more pain and suffering than minor injuries. A bruised hip from a slip and fall accident will cause less pain and suffering than a fractured hip, warranting a different compensation value as well. Additionally, a permanent or long-term injury typically causes more pain and suffering than a short-term injury from which you will heal.

For example, the symptoms from a concussion often last two to three months and produce no long-term effects. By contrast, a cerebral contusion can permanently damage the brain and cause disabilities. Thus, a concussion would justify less pain and suffering compensation than a cerebral contusion in this case, even though they are both brain injuries.

Most states do not endorse any specific formula for calculating pain and suffering. Some judges allow testimony from a damages expert to assist the jury, though. The two leading methods for assessing pain and suffering losses are the per diem and multiplier methods.

Per Diem Method

The per diem method asks jurors to put a daily value on a plaintiff’s pain and suffering and multiply it by the duration of the injury’s effects. For instance, a jury might find that the symptoms caused by a broken arm caused $100 in pain and suffering per day. If the plaintiff’s arm recovered in 60 days, pain and suffering compensation would total $6,000.

Multiplier Method

The multiplier method requires jurors to select a factor between 1.5 and 5.0 based on the severity and duration of the injury. The jury must use common sense to choose the factor.

The highest number would be reserved for severe injuries with lifelong effects, such as a spinal cord injury that causes permanent paralysis. Other pain and suffering multiplier examples might include 5.0 when a limb is amputated or 2.0 when the same limb is only broken.

The jury then calculates the plaintiff’s economic losses and multiplies it by the factor. The resulting number is the plaintiff’s total damages.

For example, a jury that selects a factor of 2.5 for a plaintiff with $15,000 in economic losses would award a total of $37,500 in compensation, with $15,000 for economic losses plus $22,500 for non-economic losses.

Contact ConsumerShield to Protect Your Right to Compensation

Pain and suffering damages can help you recover from the intangible impacts of your accident. You can find out how much of this compensation you may be entitled to by speaking to a personal injury attorney.

ConsumerShield can guide you on protecting your right to damages and connect you with a trusted lawyer in your area. Contact us for a free case review and attorney referral today.