How Much Money Will I Get From My Settlement?

If you are hurt in an accident, you have lots of questions. But most questions are aimed at the same point: how much money will I get out of my settlement or verdict? This "how much?" question is the most pressing issue our clients have. And it should be.

First, let's be clear. We cannot give you an exact answer. Any lawyer who suggests they can offer you a real value in an online consultation or a phone call is, to put it generously, blowing smoke.

But what you can find on this website is information that will give you a better idea of (1) what your case is worth, (2) how much money that puts in your pocket, (3) how long the process will take, and (4) the average settlement value based on the type of injury or type of accident.  

This page will give you a ton of information and statistics about your case. But if you have a seriously hurt, you need someone to fight for you. We fight for every last penny we can get either by way of settlement or trial. If you have a serious personal injury case, call 800-553-8082 or get a free online consultation here. We will fight for you.

Clearly, there is absolutely a settlement formula for personal injury car accident claims in jurisdictions like Maryland:

Past Medical Bills
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Future Medical Bills
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Past Lost Wages
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Future Lost Wages
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Pain and Suffering Damages

This is the formula to calculate your settlement in a car crash case.

In the vast majority of our cases, the greatest harm in the case is pain, usually physical pain. How do you measure the pain and suffering that goes with physical and emotional damage?

The answer depends on the case. In some types of car and truck accident cases, insurance companies will try to use a computer program to compute a blueprint of a settlement formula, by having the insurance adjuster put all of the details of the medical records into a computer to spit out a settlement range for the insurance payout.

In severe injury cases, a computer system trying to number crunch a dollar amount is an abomination of justice. (You can get a complete look at how insurance companies value cases here. At the bottom of this article, you can read about your particular injury and how those claims have been assessed by juries at trial and insurance companies for settlement.)

In most traffic collision cases, if there is a serious dispute of liability, the case is most likely going to trial. Medical malpractice and products liability claims are a different beast. The same formula applies to medical negligence, product defect, and premises liability cases with one addition: you have to multiply the likelihood of success on the question of whether the defendant is at fault for the accident by the formula's calculation.

You don't have to be a statistician to figure out the equation here. If your case is worth $2 million, but you have an 80% chance of winning the case, your "settlement formula" calculation would be $1.6 million.

This is the real question, right? How much money will you put in your pocket? Make no mistake. Personal injury cases are about money.

No doubt, there is more to life than money. But a civil tort case is about money. Does not mean you would not rather have your pain go away or your loved one come back? Of course not. But, unfortunately, money is all the justice you can get when making a claim.

Let's go back to that $2 million case that settled for $1.6 million because of the risk of a defense verdict at trial. Two things cut into that $1.6 million payout: (1) attorneys' fees and expenses and, (2) and medical liens.

Attorneys' fees are easy to figure out; they should be carefully spelled out in the retainer agreement. For our clients, the fees are the same in every single case we have: 33% of the recovery if the case settles before a lawsuit is filed and 40% of the recovery if the case settles after the claim is filed.

So, your attorneys' fees under this scenario would be $533,333. Your second attorney related deduction is your expenses. Our firm fronts all of the client expenses (and swallows those expenses if you lose) but gets those costs back from the recovery.

How much are client expenses? It varies from less than $100 to well over $100,000 if your case goes to trial. It depends on the case. You can't know the exact amount that your expenses will be, but you can have an open and transparent line of communication with your attorney as to what the expenses may be. If you settle a severe injury case before filing suit, the expenses will be a fraction of what they would be if you take the claim to trial. The real money gets spent putting the case on for trial. In one of our law firm's complex medical malpractice practices, the cost will often exceed $100,000 long before the case goes to trial. But with Miller & Zois, and most law firms, we front those expenses, and the client is not obligated to pay them if we do not get a financial recovery that exceeds those costs. In other words, our law firm bears all of the out-of-pocket risks.

The last significant line item in most case is medical bills and medical liens. Medical bills are an easy one. You have to pay back the provider for your medical bills. On most medical bills, the client has an option as to whether they want to pay the outstanding bills out of their settlement.

To negotiate the bills and pay the claim out of the settlement or simply to leave the bills open. Some medical bills may be legally required to pay some medical bills out of a settlement. Some health care providers who know they have a motor vehicle collision case will require the plaintiff to sign an "assignment and authorization." This agreement requires counsel to reach a deal to pay back the health care providers (or place the money in escrow). Hospitals have the ability to place a lien requiring the lawyers to pay at least some portion of their bill.

Medical liens are a little more tricky, and the rules are going to vary by state. Let's talk about Maryland because that is where we handle the vast majority of our cases.

In Maryland, the health insurance company has a contractual right in many cases to be repaid. If you don't pay them back, you risk breaching your contract and losing your health insurance.

But they are not paying out $200,000. They are sending the providers $150,000 to extinguish those bills. In the majority of cases we handle, the patient is not obligated to pay the remaining $50,000.

We fight like crazy so our client does not get charged for the difference. We almost always win. But this depends on the jurisdiction and the language of the health insurance policy.

Whether you have outstanding medical bills or medical liens, the best lawyers do not stop fighting for their clients when they get a verdict or settlement. They fight for their clients work to get those medical bills and medical liens reduced.

So, in summary, there is no average personal injury settlement calculator. Artificial intelligence has not come that far. But if you do your research - see more below - you have a chance of getting a pretty good understanding of what the settlement ranges for your case might be.

Our law firm handles motor vehicle collision and other tort claims. If you have been injured by a defective product, malpractice, or a motor vehicle collision, call us at 800-553-8082 or get an almost instant free no obligation consultation.

• Average Paraplegia Verdicts (average verdict in these awful, catastrophic cases)
• Average Wrongful Death Settlements and Verdicts (verdicts and sample cases trying to place a number on the pain, hardship, and isolation that comes with an unexpected loss)
• Spinal Cord Injuries (how much money for these cases?)
• Burn Injuries (average by type of burn injury)
• Cancer Misdiagnosis Verdicts (average verdicts in failure to diagnose cancer cases)
• Loss of an Eye (verdicts and sample resolutions to cases in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.)
• Loss of Sight Cases (value of vision loss cases without specificity as to the type of vision loss)
• Vertebral Fractures (median values)
• Fractured Back (median verdict and settlement values in Maryland)

• How much is your case worth based on what type of accident caused your cervical or herniated disc injury?
• Value of Cervical Herniated Disc Cases (Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia)
• National disc injury verdict data

• Foot and Ankle Injuries
• Fractured and Broken Legs: Get median and average verdicts and sample case results)
• Knee Injury Verdicts (median and average verdict data on knee injury cases)
• Amputated Toe Cases (national verdict data)

• Shoulders
  • Shoulder Injuries Generally
  • Rotator Cuff
  • Fractured Shoulder
• Hand, Wrist, and Fingers
  • Wrist Fractures (settlements and verdicts in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia)
  • Finger and Hand Verdicts (average, median, and sample cases that went to trial or resolved out-of-court)
• Facial Scarring (average value)
• Fractured Hip (Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia)
• Fractured Ribs
• Headaches (average, median, and type of collision)

• Average Car Accident Settlements in Maryland
• Valuing Truck Accident Cases
• Head on Collisions
• Motorcycle Crashes
• Bicycle Accidents

• Value of Malpractice Claims by Types of Case
• Value of Wrongful Death Malpractice Claims
• Nursing Home Values
• Premises Liability
• Legal Malpractice

• Maryland
  • Death claims
  • Car accident (average car accident settlement/verdict)
  • Truck accident
  • Nursing home
  • Malpractice
  • Individual Counties
    • Baltimore City
    • PG County
    • Baltimore County
    • Montgomery County
    • Analysis of All Maryland Counties
• Washington, D.C.
• New York (average personal injury jury verdicts)
  • More data from New York
• California (average personal injury jury verdicts)
  • More data on California personal injury settlements
• Ohio (verdict values)
• Illinois (average verdict in personal injury cases)
• Georgia (average and median personal injury verdicts)
• Florida (average personal injury lawsuit verdicts)
• Texas (average personal injury jury verdicts)
• Get verdict data for Michigan, Virginia, Washington, D.C., New Hampshire, Tennessee, Missouri, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Minnesota, Louisiana, Minnesota, Alabama, and Kentucky

Note: Take them with a grain of salt. These do not reflect the value of your case or any individual case. To get a better idea of the value of YOUR claim, you need to speak with counsel who can address all of the relevant facts in your case.

• Handling Your Accident Claim Without a Lawyer
• Is There a Formula or Calculator to Get the Value of My Case?

We 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 victim's advocates at 800-553-8082 or get a free on-line consultation.