Personal Injury Settlement Amounts Examples

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Personal Injury Settlement Amounts Examples

This article will look at several examples of personal injury settlement amounts and help you gauge if pursuing a personal injury claim or settlement agreement may be a good idea in your case. When you are catastrophically injured, you may begin to consider bringing a suit to ensure that you and your family are adequately compensated for the injuries sustained. Bringing a personal injury case can be a large ask, especially when juggling doctor’s appointments, fights with the insurance company, and adjusting to the new normal of life.

Personal injury claims, especially if you have a good case, can be lifesavers when dealing with medical bills, lost wages, and overall pain and suffering. Even if you think you may not want to go through the whole process, it may still be worth bringing a personal injury claim because you could find yourself on the better end of a settlement agreement, which can pay what you need to get by moving forward.

We will outline what a personal injury lawsuit is, including the involvement of attorneys, and then dive into what may be damaged in such a lawsuit. Then, we will discuss several factors that can influence the amounts offered in settlement negotiations and some of the costs that must be considered when bringing a claim. Finally, we will look at examples of what people obtained as a settlement amount and discuss what may have gone into the calculation.

This article aims to help you understand what goes into a settlement amount and what you may need to focus on in a personal injury settlement or mediation meeting.

Understanding the Personal Injury Lawsuit

Personal injury cases are cases against another person or legal entity that has harmed you in some way that has caused you to suffer damages. This includes claims from a car accident, a work accident, or even complicated issues like premises liability or medical malpractice cases.

Most personal injury cases are for people who have suffered serious and lifelong injuries as a result of the action taken by the other person; however, there can be room to bring a claim for less severe injuries or even injuries that may not be as impactful longterm but could have a significant short-term impact. These lawsuits are designed to help compensate you for the pain and suffering you are feeling due to the injuries.

Personal injury cases are separate from criminal cases that can arise from the same incident. Still, those cases will often impact the settlement amounts found in the cases. For example, a family may sue a person convicted of manslaughter for the wrongful death of their loved one. This is often seen as a way for victims of a crime to be compensated for their loss in a way that the criminal justice system does not provide. However, bringing a personal injury claim is unnecessary, and often, the injury happens accidentally or negligently.

Speaking with a Personal Injury Lawyer

The best way to determine the strength of a claim is to speak with an experienced personal injury attorney about your case. An experienced personal injury lawyer will better understand the average personal injury settlement in your area and the strength of your claim in settlement negotiations and for the case as a whole.

Additionally, most personal injury lawyers will only take on the case if you have a good chance at winning because their fees are often built into the requested damages. This means they only get paid if they win, so many will not take cases in which they do not believe they can achieve a fair personal injury settlement or damages award.

Typical Damages in a Personal Injury Lawsuit

To better understand what may go into a personal injury settlement amount, it can be helpful to identify the different categories of damages you may request in personal injury lawsuits. In a lawsuit, damages are remedies you can ask for, such as money or property transfers. Personal injury damages fall into several categories that should be considered when outlining a plan for personal injury settlements.

Medical Expenses

The most common damages requested in a personal injury case are medical expenses, such as medical bills for emergency treatment and aftercare, ongoing medical treatment, physical therapy, and necessary equipment for further treatment. The economic cost of a lasting or catastrophic injury can often put someone in debt and subject them to a life of poverty moving forward if they are not adequately compensated. Asking for these to be covered can help alleviate some of that burden.

Economic Damages

A personal injury victim can also request compensation for the injury’s impact on your economic position. If you are unable to work for some time or ever, you may be entitled to lost wages or the difference in wages from what you were previously earning to what you are capable of earning after the accident. Fair compensation often involves some arithmetic to determine what you have lost.

Pain and Suffering Damages

An accident victim may seek compensation for the emotional harm that they suffered as a result of the accident and the injuries sustained. These are often considered more punitive damages designed for the more intentional and heinous injuries, but these damages may also be included if there was trauma associated with the event. These are particularly common in cases where accident victims will need ongoing therapy or trauma treatment to process what happened to them.

Property Reimbursement

Another area in which you may recover compensation is for destroyed property. This is particularly common for accident victims who lost the use of their car as a part of the auto accidents. This is usually limited to the actual value of the property being replaced in the condition it was in right before the car accident, meaning that an accident victim may not use the claims process to get a brand new car if they were driving a car worth little mone at the time of the accident.

Loss of Enjoyment

Some accident victims’ injuries may cause them to enjoy their lives and relationships less. They may have less social interaction because they need to seek more regular care from their medical provider or have less access to social gathering spaces. These damages can be difficult to compute, but a person may be able to recover compensation for these issues.

Factors Affecting Personal Injury Claims

When evaluating how much compensation is fair given the personal injuries sustained, it is important to determine the impact that several other factors may have on the case and the compensation received. Because these factors are weighed together to determine a fair settlement amount or request, no one factor will eliminate or undermine a claim. Personal injury settlements work by considering all the facts and finding an amount that works for all the parties involved.

The Severity of the Injury

One of the weightiest factors is the severity of the injuries and their overall impact on the victim’s daily life. A minor injury with little interference will often recover less than a life-long disability. Typically, personal injury attorneys divide injuries into three tiers based on severity and impact. These are discussed below, ranging from most severe to least severe.

Tier 1:

Tier 1 (T1) injuries are the most severe and have the biggest impact on the victim’s life moving forward. This includes injuries like dismemberment, permanent disfigurement, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and death. People with T1 injuries and their families will be dealing with the implications of the injury for the rest of the person’s life. These injuries are often awarded the highest amounts in settlement or litigation.

Tier 2:

Tier 2 (T2) are the slightly less impactful injuries. These may cause you to be out of work for some time, but you will likely be able to return at some point. These are still considered complex injuries, such as broken bones and cuts, that require significant medical treatment to resolve. These injuries are often in the middle range of a typical personal injury settlement amount.

Tier 3:

Tier 3 (T3) are the least severe injuries regarding their impact on daily life. This most frequently involves soft tissue injuries, such as sprains, strains, and bruises. While you may miss a little work or need care for a short time, you can most likely return to normal routines more quickly. These will often result in a lower settlement amount.

Different states can have different rules when it comes to the impact of emotional harm and whether a person may bring a personal injury claim based on pain and suffering damages alone. Courts are beginning to recognize the severe emotional impact that certain situations may have on individuals without resulting in physical injuries; however, it is not a fully flushed-out area of law in many states. While possible, you must consult an attorney if you face purely emotional damages.

Fault

Another common factor that may impact a settlement award is the fault assigned to the person for their injuries. In some car accidents, faults may be assigned to both parties, which may be weighted to their role in the accident. Different states will have different formulas to determine how much is allotted to each person and who can recover from whom. You may be partially at fault if you played a role in the injury’s circumstances.

Insurance Coverage

Insurance coverage may also factor into the average settlement amounts. This is because the law typically does not allow personal injury settlements paid toward expenses already covered by an insurance company. This does not mean that you cannot recover compensation for the changes in insurance coverage or cost based on the accident’s role. Still, you may not be compensated for medical bills or expenses if the insurance company pays for them.

Demographic Factors

Finally, certain demographic factors may discount your claim and the personal injury settlement amounts you will be offered. Your location, age, health history, pre-existing conditions, and other similar factors may impact the outcome of the claim.

Other Costs in a Personal Injury Claim

In addition to the factors listed above, you may need to build in a higher ask when entering settlement negotiations to cover costs that arise during the personal injury case, which are listed below.

Legal Fees

One of the biggest costs in personal injury claims is often the legal fees associated with hiring a great legal team from a standout law firm. There may also be court fees for filing certain paperwork that could be covered under settlement agreements. When seeking compensation and negotiating for a fair personal injury settlement amount, you will want to keep these expenses in mind, as they can take a large chunk of the recovery you receive.

Investigation and Discovery Costs

You may also be responsible for certain costs associated with investigating the case, such as records requests for medical expenses, calculations of lost wages, and other ways to determine economic damages for the case. In medical malpractice cases, you may need to pay for interviews and experts to determine that a doctor acted incorrectly. Understanding that these may come from a personal injury settlement amount is important to ensure you seek compensation at fair settlement amounts.

Liens

Your insurance company or a medical provider may have taken out a lien on your presumed recovery from your personal injury claim, which will come from your personal injury settlement amounts. Accounting for these costs is necessary to ensure you have enough when negotiating.

Examples of How Personal Injury Cases Are Resolved

To conclude this article, we will examine a few examples of how people are compensated for personal injuries, including pain and suffering and medical expenses.

Car Accident Average Settlements

The average personal injury settlement for a car accident is between $35,000 and $100,000+. This varies depending on the type of accident, particularly when commercial trucks are involved. It also tends to be higher when a pedestrian is hit than two automobiles.

The average settlement for a car accident tends to be lower, often because both parties are injured, and the fault may be shared.

Worker’s Compensation

For accidents at work, the typical settlement amount is between $5,000 and $30,000. This will vary greatly depending on the type of injury, the fault of the company for not keeping employees safe, and the lost wages due to the injury.

Slip and Fall

When a person slips and hurts themselves on someone else’s property, they can expect an average settlement of $10,000 to $50,000. This will vary greatly depending on the above factors, particularly property insurance.

Dog Bite

Another common personal injury case is a dog bite case. A personal injury lawyer may be able to bring upwards of $100,000 in a settlement amount for these cases because the other side is most commonly squarely at fault.

Conclusion

If you know someone has gone through pain and suffering due to an accident of some kind, you may want to speak with a personal injury attorney from a local law firm to help guide you through the process and evaluate the case. If you hope to resolve the case, a settlement agreement may just be the right place to do it.

Contact ADR Times for more examples of personal injury settlement amounts, agreements, negotiations, and more!

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Emily Holland
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