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What is Prejudgment Interest? – Personal Injury Lawyers

Recovering Prejudgment Interest in Addition to Your Personal Injury Compensation

If you’ve been injured by someone’s negligent or reckless actions, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. If your personal injury lawsuit is successful, you may also be entitled to prejudgment interest (as well as post-judgment interest) on the compensation you’ve been awarded. However, before discussing how prejudgment interest may affect recovery for your injuries in a personal injury lawsuit, it’s important that you realize that the applicability and calculation of prejudgment interest in your personal injury lawsuit requires a thorough examination of the facts of your case by an experienced personal injury attorney. Our attorneys have more than 20 years of experience representing personal injury victims like you and are dedicated to assisting you to obtain full compensation for your injuries, including prejudgment interest.

Prejudgment Interest and Texas’s Personal Injury Laws

Under Texas’s tort laws, personal injury victims are entitled to a variety of damages designed to compensate them for the injuries they’ve suffered and the unexpected medical expenses they’ve endured. Additionally, Texas law has made available prejudgment interest for those damages, which are essentially additional damages for a victim’s lost use of the compensation they’ve received for the time period between the time their claim accrued and the close of the case. Texas law has made a point of enforcing the fact that prejudgment interest is solely intended to compensate a personal injury victim for the loss use of the money from the judgment, and is not a penalty, a fine, or a “windfall.” Click on this link @ https://www.attorneys-sa.com/car-accident-lawyer-in-san-antonio/
It’s important to note that some types of compensation under Texas’s personal injury laws aren’t subject to prejudgment interest. For example, future damages like lost earning capacity, attorney’s fees and costs, and punitive damages aren’t subject to prejudgment interest.

The Purpose of Prejudgment Interest

Texas’s personal injury laws have purposed prejudgment interest to expedite the judicial process by punishing the party responsible for causing the victim’s injuries for unfairly delaying the judicial process by imposing a monetary penalty. Courts have reasoned that this arrangement is reasonable for both personal injury victims and defendants because it removes the defendant’s incentive to unfairly delay paying a judgment by dragging their feet and doesn’t create an inequitable benefit for the injury victim.

How Are Prejudgment Interest Calculated?

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Simply put, calculating prejudgment interest is complicated. Your attorney will likely retain the assistance of an expert in quantifying prejudgment interest. The calculation they will perform is either governed by the Texas Finance Code or by the court’s determination of “equity,” or what is fair for your case.

For the purposes of personal injury cases, courts calculate prejudgment interest by using the Texas Finance Code when calculating prejudgment interest using a “prime” rate that ranges between five and fifteen percent and is calculated as simple interest. Calculations for prejudgment interest occur the earlier of 180 days after the defendant received notice of your claim or when your lawsuit is filed with a court and ends the day judgment is entered in a case.

As prejudgment interest can only start to accrue after the defendant is notified of your lawsuit, you should retain an experienced personal injury attorney as soon as reasonably possible after you’ve been injured. Our personal injury attorneys are here to help you, call us.