Calculation & Conversion / Calculators
Personal Injury Settlement Calculator
A personal injury settlement calculator multiplies your documented economic losses — medical bills, lost wages, property damage — by a severity factor to reach non-economic damages for pain and suffering, then applies your state's comparative-fault rule and any statutory cap on non-economic damages. This one also deducts attorney fees and case costs, so you see both the claim value and what you would actually keep. It is an educational estimate, not legal advice, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
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Your case
2-year filing deadline · pure fault rule
Estimated settlement range
Low
$81,000
Likely
$94,500
High
$108,000
$27,000 in documented losses, plus $54,000 – $81,000 for pain and suffering (those losses × 2.00× – 3.00×) — the range adjusters and attorneys use to frame value.
What you would actually keep
$57,330
likely, after fees and costs
$49,140 – $65,520
full net range
61%
of the gross settlement
A 33% contingency fee ($31,500 at the likely value) plus roughly 6% in case costs ($5,670). Contingency means you pay nothing up front and the fee comes out of the recovery.
How the range is built
Special damages are what you can document. General damages — pain and suffering — are those specials multiplied, which is why they move with the medical bills rather than with how much the injury hurt.
Documented losses (special damages)
- Medical expenses (billed)
- $18,000
- Lost wages
- $5,500
- Property damage
- $3,500
- Total economic loss
- $27,000
| Step | Low | Likely | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pain and suffering (losses × 2.00× – 3.00×) | $54,000 | $67,500 | $81,000 |
| Subtotal before fault | $81,000 | $94,500 | $108,000 |
| Gross settlement | $81,000 | $94,500 | $108,000 |
Why the multiplier is 2.00× – 3.00×
3–6 months of recovery. Casting or minor procedures, no permanent effects expected. Published practice for this injury tier is 2.00× – 3.00×, with typical recoveries around $25,000 – $100,000.
| Adjustment | Effect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Base range for broken bone or fracture | 2.00× – 3.00× | Straight from the published tier table, assuming fault is clear and treatment was continuous. |
| No adjustments applied — your case matches the baseline assumptions. | ||
| Multiplier applied | 2.00× – 3.00× | Never applied to lost wages alone — only to the full economic loss. |
What California law does to this claim
- Filing deadline
- 2 years — 6/2028
- 21 months left.
- Fault rule
- pure comparative fault
- This state lets you recover your share of the damages no matter how much fault you carry. With no fault attributed to you, there is no reduction.
- Non-economic cap
- None for general negligence
- Most states cap non-economic damages only in medical-malpractice or specific-defendant cases, not in an ordinary car-accident claim.
What moves this number — and what could sink it
Filing deadline: about 21 months from now
California allows 2 years from the date of injury, which puts the deadline near 6/2028. Missing it bars the claim permanently.
The at-fault party's insurance limit is usually the real ceiling
No matter what this estimate says, you generally cannot collect more than the available coverage. A common state-minimum policy of 25/50/25 pays at most $25,000 per person for bodily injury. If your damages exceed that, the gap has to come from your own underinsured-motorist coverage, the defendant's personal assets, or a commercial policy — which is why "what are the limits?" is one of the first questions an attorney asks.
Medical liens and health-plan reimbursements come out of the settlement
Hospitals, ambulance services, and health insurers frequently assert a lien on the settlement proceeds. That repayment is not deducted above, so the net figure is an upper bound. Attorneys routinely negotiate these liens down — another item that is hard to do alone.
Insurers often value the medical care at what was paid, not what was billed
Medical bills are frequently several times the amount a health plan or provider actually accepted. Insurers argue the "reasonable value" of care is the adjusted, paid figure, and several state supreme courts have agreed. If you entered billed charges, your real economic damages — and therefore everything multiplied off them — may be lower than shown. This cuts the other way for liens: you may owe less than the bill says.
This is a demand figure, not a forecast
The multiplier method is how adjusters and attorneys frame value, but initial insurer offers commonly land 40-60% below it, and around 95% of injury cases settle before trial rather than being decided by a jury. Treat the low end as closer to an opening position than the high end is to an expectation.
This is an educational estimate, not legal advice
It does not create an attorney-client relationship, and it cannot account for the facts a lawyer would ask about in the first ten minutes. Case value is negotiated, not computed. Use this to understand the moving parts and to ask better questions — then have a licensed attorney in the state where the injury happened evaluate the actual claim.
How we estimate — and what this is not
settlement = (medical + lost wages + property damage) × (1 + multiplier) × fault factor ; multiplier = injury tier ± adjustments
This is not legal advice, and it is not a valuation. The multiplier method is a negotiation convention, not a rule of law. It is the same framework adjusters and plaintiff attorneys use to open a conversation, and initial insurer offers commonly land well below it. Nothing here accounts for the evidence in your case, the carrier's litigation posture, venue, the adjuster's authority, liens from your health insurer, or subrogation. Figures are based on published 2025 multiplier tiers, published state filing deadlines, comparative-fault rules and non-economic damage caps, and published settlement statistics. Verify every one of them for your state and your facts with a licensed attorney — most personal injury lawyers review a case for free.
For context, across all US bodily injury claims the median payment is about $20,235, and cases with attorney involvement average $77,600 against $17,600 without — roughly 95% settle before trial. Those are portfolio statistics, not the value of your claim.
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How to use
- 1
Describe the injury
Select the state where the injury happened and the tier that fits it — soft tissue, fracture, surgery, or catastrophic — and note whether there is permanent impairment.
- 2
Enter your economic losses
Add medical expenses, days of work missed, your daily income, and property damage. These are the only documented numbers in the calculation, so they drive everything else.
- 3
Set the liability picture
Choose how clear fault is, and move your own share of fault if any is being attributed to you.
- 4
Choose the attorney structure
Pick a pre-suit or post-filing contingency fee, or no attorney at all, to see what you would actually keep.
- 5
Read the range, then read the caveats
Compare the low, likely, and high figures against the list of things that move or sink the number before you treat any figure as a target.
Key facts
- FormulaSettlement = (medical expenses + lost wages + property damage) x (1 + severity multiplier) x fault factor. Published multiplier tiers run 1.5x-2.0x for soft tissue, 2.0x-3.0x for fractures, 3.0x-4.0x for injuries requiring surgery, and 4.0x-5.0x or more for catastrophic injury with permanent disability.Source:Multiplier method as used by claims adjusters and plaintiff firms; tier ranges per published personal injury valuation guides
- CompositionA personal injury recovery has three parts: economic damages (medical bills and lost wages, documented with receipts), non-economic damages (pain and suffering, calculated as a multiple of the economic total), and in a minority of cases punitive damages, which are not part of a settlement estimate. The median US bodily injury claim payment is about $20,235.Source:Insurance Research Council bodily injury claim statistics; standard damages taxonomy
- Cost of the keywordPersonal injury attorney search terms are among the most expensive advertising keywords in any industry, commonly bidding $100-$500 per click, and legal verticals command publisher RPMs of roughly $15-$45 — roughly ten times general-interest content.Source:Published legal-marketing CPC and publisher RPM ranges, 2025
How this calculator works
The claim value is built in layers. Economic damages are the documented losses: medical expenses, lost wages and property damage. Non-economic damages are reached by applying a severity multiplier to those losses. The combined figure is then reduced by your share of fault under the state's comparative-negligence rule, and where a state caps non-economic damages the cap is applied after the multiplier and before the fault reduction. Attorney fees and case costs are deducted to show what the claimant would actually receive.
This is an estimate of claim value, not a prediction of outcome. The multiplier ranges come from published valuation guides and from how adjusters and plaintiff firms frame demands; the real figure turns on liability evidence, venue, policy limits and whether the case settles or goes to trial. The fee arrangement assumed is the common contingency structure, not a term anyone has agreed to.
Sources and standards
Disclaimer
This is an educational calculator, not financial advice. The result is an arithmetic projection of the figures you enter: it does not know your full circumstances, the terms of a specific offer, or the tax and regulatory rules that apply where you live. Confirm any figure against the terms of the product itself, or with a licensed professional, before acting on it.
Last reviewed:
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is a personal injury settlement estimate?
Treat it as an order-of-magnitude framing, not a forecast. The multiplier method is a negotiation convention that both sides use to open a conversation, not a rule of law — initial insurer offers commonly land 40-60% below the figure it produces, and roughly 95% of injury cases settle before trial rather than being decided by a jury. It also cannot see the things that actually decide value: the strength of your medical records, whether the carrier believes its insured was at fault, the venue, the adjuster's settlement authority, and any liens your health insurer holds. Across all US bodily injury claims the median payment is about $20,235, and cases with attorney involvement average $77,600 against $17,600 without — those are portfolio statistics, not the value of your claim. Use the range to decide whether a claim is worth pursuing, then get a lawyer's read on the specific facts.
Do I need a lawyer for a personal injury claim?
Not always, but the gap is large enough to matter. Insurer data shows cases with attorney involvement average roughly $77,600 in recovery against about $17,600 for claimants who handle it themselves — about 4.4x, and still 2.26x higher after a typical 33% contingency fee is deducted. That gap partly reflects case selection, since attorneys take the stronger cases, but insurers do treat unrepresented claimants differently. Most personal injury lawyers review a case for free and work on contingency, so you pay nothing unless they recover. Small, clear, fully-healed claims are the ones most often handled directly; anything with disputed fault, ongoing treatment, or a permanency question is worth a free consultation.
How long do I have to file a personal injury claim?
Most states give two to three years from the date of injury, but the range runs from one year to six, and the deadline can be shortened by notice requirements when a government entity is the defendant — often just six months. This calculator applies your state's general personal-injury statute of limitations and shows whether the deadline has passed or is approaching. Deadlines can also be tolled for minors, for claimants who are incapacitated, and under delayed-discovery rules when an injury is not immediately apparent. Do not rely on the general number alone: missing a filing deadline usually destroys the claim entirely, and no exception is reliable.
Can I still recover if I was partly at fault?
In most states, yes. Under pure comparative fault you recover your share of the damages no matter how much fault you carry. Under modified comparative fault — the majority rule — you recover as long as your share is below a bar of either 50% or 51%, and reach that bar and recovery is cut off completely. A handful of jurisdictions still apply contributory negligence, where any fault at all, even 1%, bars recovery. This calculator applies whichever rule your state uses and shows the reduction or the cutoff directly, because the difference between a 50% and a 51% bar decides real cases and the fault split is negotiated rather than fixed.
What is the multiplier method, and does it actually work?
The multiplier method values non-economic damages by multiplying documented economic losses by a severity factor — commonly 1.5x for soft-tissue injuries that fully resolve, 2x to 3x for fractures, 3x to 4x for injuries needing surgery, and 4x to 5x or more for catastrophic injury with permanent disability. It produces a demand figure rather than a prediction: adjusters use it to evaluate exposure, plaintiff attorneys use it to frame an opening demand, and the final number comes out of negotiation or a jury. The practical consequence is that pain and suffering tracks your medical bills rather than how much the injury actually hurt — which is why under-treatment, or a gap in care, cuts the value of a genuine injury more than any other single factor.
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