What’s the Difference Between Bodily Injury and Personal Injury?

You’ve likely heard the phrases “bodily injury” and “personal injury.” If you read your auto insurance policy, you’ll probably see both terms written in various places.

It’s easy to think that the two phrases mean the same thing, but in the legal world, they are very different. Here, our Texas injury attorneys explain the distinction.

What Does Bodily Injury Mean?

As the phrase implies, bodily injury means harm that’s done to a person’s physical body. Bodily injury includes harms such as:

• Whiplash
• Soft tissue injuries
• Internal organ damage
• Spinal cord damage
• Brain injury
• Bone fractures
• Loss of a limb
• Cuts
• Burns
• Scarring and disfigurement
• Wrongful death

If you or a loved one suffers these types of harms in an auto accident, you can get compensation through bodily injury insurance. Bodily injury is automatically included in almost every auto insurance policy.

What Does Personal Injury Mean?

Think of personal injury as a broader term than bodily injury. Personal injury includes all the bodily injuries plus additional types of harm, such as:

• Emotional distress
• Pain and suffering
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Psychological damage
• Lost wages and loss of wage-earning capacity
• Loss of companionship

Personal injury insurance coverage can compensate you for these types of harms. Often, the amount of compensation you can receive is greater. For example, a pain and suffering claim could be larger than what you’d receive to cover a surgery or other bodily injury claim.

The Types of Compensation Available After a Crash

Compensation for bodily injury and personal injury is usually obtained through a combination of insurance claims and personal injury lawsuits. A lawsuit is often necessary when the harm you suffered requires compensation that exceeds the value of the insurance policy.

Compensation comes in the form of economic damages and non-economic damages. Economic damages are those that have a numerical value and are easy to calculate, such as medical bills or loss of income. Non-economic damages are harder to put a monetary value on, such as emotional damage or pain and suffering.

Please read our article on calculating damages for more information.

Schedule a Free Consultation With a Dallas-Fort Worth Injury Attorney Today

If you’ve been injured in a car accident, truck wreck, motorcycle crash or any other motor vehicle accident caused by someone else, you deserve compensation. Ted B. Lyon & Associates has won millions of dollars for injured Texans. Our lawyers are here to build the strongest case we can for you.

Call 877-Ted-Lyon or contact us online to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with our legal team today.