“How much is my personal injury case worth?” is one of the most common questions injury victims ask. The value of your case is crucial because your ability to pay medical and other bills while recovering from your injuries relies on it. However, the value of personal injury cases varies widely, from thousands to millions of dollars, depending on various factors.
Factors Affecting the Value of a Personal Injury Case
Not all types of injury cases are the same. Personal injury cases are different from Worker’s Compensation, Medical Malpractice, FELA (railroad) or other cases. Usually the term ‘personal injury case’ refers to a negligence case. Examples are a slip and fall or a car accident. The most important factors affecting the value of a personal injury case are the type of injury, the extent of the injury and the severity of injuries. These factors directly impact the other elements of your case’s value, including your medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering. In general, the more severe your injuries are, the more your case will be worth.
It is important to note here that proving that the other party is at fault is a very important factor in the value of your case. The better the evidence that the other party was negligent, the more likely the insurance company will pay a larger amount to avoid a lawsuit or a jury trial.
There are basically two types of damages that can make up part of your case value. Economic damages, also called specific damages, refers to the compensation you seek for your losses with fixed value, like medical expenses and lost wages. Non-economic damages, also called general damages, refers to the losses you suffer that have an open, inexact value, like pain and suffering, loss of a normal life or disfigurement. Let’s look at the categories of compensation in a personal injury case.
Medical Expenses
Your medical expenses include any bills you receive for medical treatment, hospital stays, surgeries, medical devices, physical therapy, and prescription medications related to your injury. More severe injuries typically require more specialized or lengthy medical treatments, which increase the amount of the medical expenses.
Typically, it’s best to wait to settle or move forward with your case until you’re healed and recovered from your injuries. Sometimes, the injuries are so severe, or the pain and suffering will be life-long. The term ‘Maximum Medical Improvement’ (MMI) means the point at which further treatment is unlikely to result in additional improvement in your healing or your suffering. Once you’ve reached MMI, your lawyer can better estimate your future medical costs, as unforeseen complications are less likely to occur.
Lost Wages
The wages you lost while recovering from your injuries and the wages and work benefits you will lose because of your injuries’ impact on your ability to work can amount to a significant part of the value of your case. Whether you lose time from your job or you lose part or all of the ability you had to earn money, your lawyer can use certain evidence and testimony to claim the maximum amount of money it will take to compensate you for your loss of income. It’s important to accurately assess the effect of your injuries on your job to calculate the compensation you can seek for lost wages. There is value to both salary or hourly rate wages (called ‘on the check’) and lost health insurance or retirement benefits (called ‘off the check’).
Pain and Suffering
Generally, the more severe your injuries are, the higher your pain and suffering compensation will be. Also, the length of time you have had pain, or will continue to have in the future, will be considered when coming to a value for pain and suffering. Pain and suffering can include the normal emotional suffering for what you have gone through, the fright and horror of a severe and life-threatening accident, the chronic pain you may have throughout life resulting from the acute injuries from the accident. There is no method to precisely calculate this amount. Experienced lawyers can estimate what your pain and suffering is worth, based on their history or trial verdicts and settlement values from their prior cases.
Disability
Disability differs from pain and suffering. Disability compensation is available to those people whose injuries were so severe that they will lose dramatic physical abilities, like walking, lifting, carrying, heavy labor, or they’ve lost use of an arm, a leg, or worse. These types of grave losses dramatically increase the value of a case because such disabilities are greatly damaging to a person’s quality of life. Such disabilities must be medically verifiable and are often contested by insurance companies due to the high value of such damages.
Loss of a Normal Life
Sometimes, an accident may result in certain physical limitations that aren’t considered a disability, but the injured person has lost the joys and conveniences of some ordinary life activities. Loss of a normal life is an important way to show injuries that have a significant effect on your life, by looking at what you can or can’t do since the accident. For example, an injured leg might not have much pain after your medical treatment is through, but since the accident you haven’t been able to ride a bike, or play soccer, or walk up and down stairs like you used to. You used to be able to get out of bed, or unload the dishwasher pain-free, but not all those life activities are harder to do, or are riskier to do, because of the lingering physical limitations or pains you have since the accident. Think of the many things you enjoy – spending time with grandkids, playing ball at the park, or going for long walks. To enjoy those less, or have difficulty in doing them the way you used to, can be considered as a loss of a normal life. Compensation can be obtained for loss of a normal life.
Disfigurement
Breaking glass and airbags from an auto accident. A dog bite. A trip on a sidewalk. These are the things that can cause wounds, broken bones, eye or nose injuries. A person who obtains a dog bite scar, or has an arm that doesn’t heal right has suffered a disfiguring injury. Disfigurement can be embarrassing, it causes self-consciousness and it can take the joy out of going to holiday events, celebrating with friends and family or even simple things like looking in the mirror or taking selfies. For young people, facial disfigurements can leave lifelong emotional wounds that may require counseling, future surgeries and more. A traumatic event that leaves scarring is a lifelong loss and therefore can have a high monetary case value.
Insurance Policy Limits
In most cases, the at-fault party’s insurance company will be liable for your damages. However, insurance policies have limits beyond which you cannot recover compensation. For example, the minimum auto insurance liability coverage limits in Illinois are:
- $25,000 per person for bodily injury
- $50,000 per accident for bodily injury
- $20,000 per accident for property damage
Most trucking companies, property owners or businesses will have commercial policies with higher insurance limits. If your damages are higher the at-fault party’s insurance policy limits or multiple injured parties are splitting the insurance money, it can reduce your compensation. However, there are ways to increase your recovery, such as by identifying multiple liable parties or negotiating a reduction in your unpaid medical bills.
Comparative Negligence in Illinois
Sometimes more than one person has some responsibility for an accident. Comparative negligence means the injured person’s part in causing the accident. If an injured person is found to have some responsibility for the accident, their compensation can be reduced. Illinois follows a modified comparative negligence law. Under this law, an injured person’s compensation will be reduced by a percentage equal to their degree of fault. If the injured person is more than 50 percent at fault, the injured person will not be compensated.
Contact a Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer
If you were injured in an accident in the Chicagoland area, contact Your Chicago Lawyer for a free consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer. Our firm has a track record of successfully recovering millions of dollars for our injured clients, and we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to help you seek the money you deserve for your injuries. During your initial consultation, we’ll review the details of your case and walk through what you can expect in the pursuit of damages from your personal injury case.