Category: Damages & Compensation
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Lost Earning Capacity Arizona vs Lost Wages: Two Different Damages
Lost earning capacity Arizona claims get confused with lost wages constantly. Arizona law treats them as two separate elements of damages. Lost wages covers money you actually missed while recovering. Lost earning capacity covers something harder to see: a permanent reduction in your ability to earn going forward, even after you’ve returned to work. The…
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Duty to Mitigate Damages Arizona: What Happens If You Skip Treatment
The duty to mitigate damages Arizona law places on every injured person is easy to overlook until an insurance adjuster raises it. It means you’re expected to take reasonable steps to avoid making your own injuries worse. Skip that duty, and an insurer can argue the portion of your damages that resulted from your own…
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Collateral Source Rule Arizona: Why Insurance Payments Don’t Reduce Recovery
The collateral source rule Arizona courts apply keeps a specific piece of evidence away from the jury: proof that you had health insurance, workers’ comp, or other outside coverage that already paid some of your bills. It sounds counterintuitive at first. Why hide something so relevant? The answer says a lot about who Arizona law…
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Loss of Household Services Arizona: Valuing the Work You Can’t Do
A loss of household services Arizona claim compensates for something insurers routinely overlook. It’s the value of the work an injured person can no longer do at home. Cooking, cleaning, yard work, childcare, home repairs — these tasks have real economic value, even without a paycheck attached. When an injury takes that work away, someone…
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Hedonic Damages Arizona: Compensation for Loss of Enjoyment of Life
Hedonic damages Arizona law treats as their own distinct category, separate from pain and suffering. Most injured people have never heard the term, yet the concept is intuitive: it’s compensation for the loss of life’s ordinary pleasures, not the pain of the injury itself. A shattered knee that ends someone’s decade of weekend hiking involves…
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Punitive Damages Arizona: When “Evil Mind” Conduct Applies
Punitive damages Arizona courts award are rare, and that’s by design. Most personal injury cases settle on compensatory damages alone — money for medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Punitive damages sit in a different category entirely. They exist to punish a defendant’s conduct, not to compensate the victim, and Arizona sets a…
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Loss of Consortium Claims in Arizona: When a Spouse’s Injury Affects You Too
A loss of consortium claim in Arizona lets a spouse, parent, or child seek damages for a severely injured family member’s loss of companionship.
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Are Personal Injury Settlements Taxable? What the IRS Actually Taxes
Are personal injury settlements taxable? Only in specific pieces, not the whole check. What the IRS actually taxes, and what it leaves alone.
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Medical Liens in Arizona: How Letters of Protection Pay Your Bills Before Settlement
Medical liens in Arizona let providers treat you now and collect from the settlement later. How liens and letters of protection actually work.
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Structured Settlements Explained: When Payments Over Time Beat a Lump Sum
A structured settlement spreads a personal injury recovery over time instead of a lump sum. How it works, the tax advantage, and when it makes sense.