Did you suffer injuries in a car accident and you were wondering how much your personal injury case is worth? Check out this short video on how to value a personal injury settlement.
Hey everyone, Barry with the LawFull channel. I’m a long time personal injury lawyer here in Chicago. I also do marketing for other lawyers. On this channel you’ll find short videos on the legal topics that affect our lives. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to my channel and if you have any questions please put them in the comments section.
So how do you figure out how much your personal injury case is worth? Well first I want to tell you how not to value your case. You read a lot on the internet that you’re supposed to take your medical bills and multiply them times 2 or 3 three and that’s how much you can expect to get.
That’s a really old formula and not really applicable any more. But if you’re representing yourself and you’re trying to figure out how much to ask for you can start there.
But don’t expect the insurance company to look at that as a viable way of making you an offer.
So, if you can’t use that old formula, what do you do? Well, you look at a wide variety of factors, the first thing you need to know is there are two main types of damages – special and general damages.
Special damages are your economic damages like lost wages, medical bills and out of pocket expenses while general damages are your pain and suffering, anxiety and emotional distress.
For your special damages, it’s easy, you ask for your costs basically, if you had 5,000 in medical bills or $2500 in lost wages, you submit all your meds and if they’re verifiable, you should recover that much depending on what state you are in.
Most people don’t ask me much about their specials. The question I usually get is how much is my pain and suffering worth? This is what personal injury cases are mostly known for.
First, like I said above, there is no formula. One thing I can guarantee, your idea about how much its worth is going to be very different than the insurance company’s idea that’s for sure. And the tough part is how do you measure the value of your pain?
Well how much you can recover is based on a few factors:
First, not sure if you thought about this but the first factor is the severity of your injury – if you suffered a back sprain, your recovery is going to be significantly different than if you suffered a herniated disc. It’s a sliding scale with sprains and strains on the left and well death on the other side and everything in between.
Second it’s going to depend on the extent of your medical treatment. If you got in an accident and saw your internist once and got a massage, your recovery will be very different than someone who underwent surgery.
The third question you should ask is if you suffered any permanent damages. Will you walk with a limp the rest of your life, do you have a scar on your face from a dog bite that is never going away. Permanency is a big factor in your recovery.
Another factor that you might not have considered is – how much insurance is there? Most people do not have a lot of insurance. If you’ve got a $100k case but there’s only $25k in insurance, your maximum recovery in most cases is going to be $25k. It’s not fair but that’s the way it is.
The last factor, listen, there are many other factors, but I just want to point out that chances are, if you are represented by an attorney, you’re going to recover more than if you represent yourself. A large number of my past clients started out trying to represent themselves against Allstate or State Farm, got low balled and then realized they needed to hire an attorney.
Hey everyone, thanks for checking out this video on how much your personal injury case is worth. If you haven’t already, subscribe to my channel and if you have any other questions, reach out to me in the comments section below. If I can’t help you, I’ll find someone who can.
