Valuing Personal Injury Accident Cases

Average Personal Injury Settlements and Awards and How Your Claim is Valued for Money Damages

More Case Value Information

The first question our clients have is what is the settlement or trial value of my case. Sometimes, It is a hard thing for some to talk about. People are generally uncomfortable talking about money. But the very purpose of our legal system in personal injury cases is to fairly compensate the injury victim for his/her injuries with money damages. So we have to be able to talk about it.

Ultimately, the real question is not how much the case is worth but how much money, when all is said and done, will I put in my pocket when my case is over? You are not going to get an exact answer to this question here or anywhere else. But, hopefully, this page will give you a better idea of the real value of your personal injuy case.

Values of Serious Personal Injury Cases

Predicting the trial value or even settlement value of a serious personal injury case with precision is difficult.  There are many factors that can affect the value of a case.  Assuming the insurance company believes, based on past experience, that your personal injury lawyer is ready, willing and able to go to trial, the settlement value of a serious injury case is a jury prediction of what six Maryland jurors will decide your claim is worth. Accordingly, different juries will arrive at different verdicts under the same set of circumstances. Jurors bring with them, just as all of us do, their own personal biases that can either help or hurt you. Accordingly, this unpredictability leads to a wide range of results. So for settlement purposes, lawyers and insurance companies take an average of what they believe a jury would award. If they generally agree on what that average is, the case will typically settle if the client agrees.

One fact of life in determining the settlement value of a personal injury case is that the value increases over time. More than 95% of the time, the value of a Maryland injury case will increase from the time before suit is filed to the time of (or day before) trial. Our accident lawyers have had cases where the pretrial offer was more than 30 times the pre-suit offer. This is particularly true in medical mistake cases which are virtually impossible to settle without filing a lawsuit. In other injury cases, we have settled cases for hundreds of thousands of dollars when the pre-suit offer was zero. (See our attorneys' testimonials for a sampling of these instances.) Our lawyers present the facts to the client, narrowly tailored to their specific case, and let our personal injury clients make the call whether to proceed or to continue to move forward with the litigation process.
Studies Looking at Value of Personal Injury Cases

There is data available to give injury victims some general notion of the personal injury awards accident victims are receiving in personal injury cases in Maryland. In 2010, a company that analyzes jury verdicts in personal injury cases did a study that found that the nationwide median jury award in a personal injury case was approximately $40,000 and plaintiffs win 48% of jury trial. The average personal injury verdict, as opposed to the median verdict, is $985,675.

Verdicts in Maryland Personal Injury Lawsuits
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In Maryland personal injury cases, the median compensatory award in personal injury trials was $12,813. The good news for victims is that the plaintiff prevailed in 69% of the cases (as opposed to 55% nationally).

      Maryland plaintiffs prevailed in 83% of auto accident cases. The average jury award in these claims was $11,925. In contrast, plaintiffs prevailed in only 8% of medical malpractice cases in Maryland (bearing in mind that most meritorious cases often settle before trial) but the average jury award in medical malpractice cases was $808,772. The study does not breakdown these jury verdicts by county, but clearly the larger jury awards in Maryland are in Baltimore and P.G County.

Our Attorneys' Results in Personal Injury Cases

      If the data above is discouraging, you might be comforted to know that our attorneys' average is over 20 times that Maryland average. Granted, we don't handle small cases. But there is probably something more here, too. These averages also include include a lot of lawyers who do not have a clue about how to handle a personal injury case, people having a go at it without an attorney, and a lot of lawsuits that never should have been filed in . This really distorts the data to the point where it is almost meaningless. Good, well-prepared lawyers (and there are many great personal injury attorneys in Maryland) who have a good client, meticulously prepare a case and then present it honestly and fairly to a jury, typically get much better awards than those who do not.

The Factors That Matter in Personal Injury Cases

      But these verdict statistics and our law firms' verdicts are clearly not predictive of the result in any individual case. It sounds cliche but.... your case is unique. You need to discuss with your lawyer the specific facts of your personal injury case, the possible defenses that may be asserted by the defendant's lawyer, and come to a conclusion about the value of your case. valueofinjurycaseThis discussion will also include the severity of the injuries you suffered, the amount of available insurance, how clear the causal connection is between your injuries and the accident, how strong your liability case is, the quality of all of the witnesses, and the expected jury perceptions of you and the defendant (Maryland jurors are not told in a personal injury trial that the defendant has an insurance policy).

This discussion with your lawyer will also include analysis of the venue where the case is being tried. In Maryland, as we mentioned earlier, Baltimore City and Prince George's County are favorable venues for plaintiffs. Conversely, in more rural areas of Maryland, such as Baltimore County or Wicomico County, for example, the awards are more conservative. This is true not just in Maryland but throughout the United States -- jury awards are typically higher in urban areas than in rural areas. That said, some of the best jurisdictions in the country for personal injury victims are Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, are states that have very large rural populations.

Value of Smaller Personal Injury Cases

      It is not difficult to predict the settlement value of a smaller injury case in Maryland where the injuries are not substantial. Cases in Maryland where the value of the case is less than $30,000 cannot be predicted with exact certainty, of course. But a range in these cases is a lot easier to predict. Why? Because these cases are decided by a judge rather than a jury. Accordingly, if you know the amount of lost wages, the injuries, and the way the injured client will appear at trial, a seasoned lawyer familiar with the district court judges in the particular county where the case is being tried can generally make a close prediction as to how the judge might rule. (It is worth noting here that our law firm handles only serious injury malpractice, accident and product defect claims and does not handle non-serious injury cases.)

How the Insurance Companies Determine Value in Accident Cases

      Typically, most of the insurance companies our lawyers deal with use computer software to determine the value of car, truck, and motorcycle accident cases. Most use a computer system called Colossus, which is reportedly used by more than 50 percent of the nation's claims insurance adjusters. Many other insurance companies use a similar program. The insurance adjuster inputs the data received from your lawyers, your medical records and the amount of your lost wages. Colossus then considers the severity of the accident and where the accident occurred (or where suit could be brought). Colossus will give a higher value for a case in a venue considered favorable for accident victims, such as Baltimore City or Prince George's County, than it would for the same case in, for example, Garrett County, Anne Arundel County, or Montgomery County in Maryland.

Tips on Each Insurance Company

      Colossus and its progeny consider whether your accident lawyer has a history of successfully taking trials to verdict in Maryland or whether the accident lawyer simply settles all of his/her personal injury cases. Both the computer and the insurance adjusters know which lawyers just settle their cases without even considering a trial if the offer is unreasonable. This is one of many reasons why the quality of your accident attorney matters so much even if you intend to settle your case without filing a lawsuit or going to trial. Colossus then specifically looks to the causes of your pain as described in your medical records.

One of the most important questions is whether the injuries are permanent. Colossus also gives higher values for objective injuries (broken bones, herniated discs) measured by diagnostic testing than soft tissue injuries. It does give, however, values for muscle spasm (for which Colossus gives particular weight in cases without a defined objective injury), restriction on movement, radiating pain, anxiety, depression, headaches, dizziness, and visual disturbance. Colossus also gives greater value in accident cases where the patient went to the hospital for initial treatment of the injuries immediately after the accident.

      Colossus takes this information and generates a range of settlement values for that accident case. While Colossus and similar programs do have some value, the problem is they cannot grasp the complexity of a human's pain and suffering. There is no computer that can ascertain pain and suffering or how an injury really impacted a person's life. How much is it worth to not be able to pick up your newborn baby without extreme pain? There is no way a computer can answer this question. Colossus does not really try; it just assumes it is not really a big inconvenience.

      This is why your lawyer must fully explain to the insurance company why your injuries are different or be prepared to file a lawsuit to obtain fair value for your case. When your lawyer files a lawsuit, the insurance companies will sometimes take a second look at the real trial value of the case, particularly when they know that the accident lawyers handling the case are willing to go to trial. While Colossus cannot appreciate pain, suffering and the true impact of the injury on the victim, judges and juries tend to listen to and consider many of the factors that Colossus ignores because it does not understand them. It is only a formula. Juries make distinctions on how much your case is worth based upon whether or not they think the plaintiff is an honest good person who has suffered as a result of their injuries.

Clearly, the true value of the same injury can vary widely. If your injury is a scar on your face, the value a jury will place on the scar is going to depend on the Plaintiff. Sex, age, pride in appearance, all of these things are going to matter in determining vacourtlue. The same goes for ankle and leg injuries where the victim can no longer run. If you are a couch potato, the value is different for you than for the client who can tell a jury they ran a marathon or played soccer every week in the yard with their kids just two years ago. These details matter to every juror but the computer tunes them out completely.

      In reality, juries are in many ways the opposite of Colossus because juries respond to human pain and suffering. A jury may not award damages based on the nuances of a C4/C5 cervical (neck) herniated disc injury but it will award damages because Mom used to be a shopaholic for her three kids at Christmas time but now cannot get off a bench at the mall because her neck hurts too much when she walks. A computer cannot understand this kind of impact and never will. The very purpose of a jury in our legal system is to take these types of intangibles into consideration to render a fair verdict.

     Our Maryland personal injury attorneys handle accident, product liability and malpractice cases in Maryland and, in particularly serious cases, thoughout the country. If you have been injured by a defective product, medical malpractice, or a truck accident, car accident, or motorcycle accident, call to speak to one of our attorneys at 800-553-8082 or select here for a free no obligation consultation.

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  • Is There a Formula to Calculate Personal Injury Accident Settlement Value: discussion of whether there is a formula to calculate settlements
If You Need an Experienced Personal Injury Lawyer

     Our accident and malpractice lawyers handle personal injury accident and malpractice cases in Maryland but also throughout the country. If you or a loved one has suffered a serious personal injury as the result of the negligence of someone else, call our personal injury lawyers at 800-553-8082 or get a free on-line consultation.