Injury Settlement Values: What Each Injury Is Worth

Adjusters do not price injuries one at a time. They sort them into severity bands and apply a multiplier to your economic damages, the bills and lost income you can actually document. This site uses five tiers, running from a multiplier of 1.5x at tier 1 to 5.0x at tier 5, which is the range bodily injury adjusters work within when setting a claim reserve.

The consequence is that the multiplier and your documented losses matter jointly, not separately. A tier 3 injury on $8,000 of bills and a tier 1 injury on $25,000 of bills can land in the same place. Raising the tier without raising the documented loss moves the number far less than people expect, which is why applying a multiplier to economic damages spends most of its length on the economic side.

The tier is a starting position, not a verdict. It is where the negotiation opens once liability is accepted.

The single strongest predictor of where in a range a claim lands is whether the injury shows up on an image. A fracture on an X-ray, a herniation or a torn ACL on an MRI, or a documented nerve conduction deficit gives an adjuster something they cannot argue away, and it prices accordingly.

Soft tissue and whiplash claims sit at the bottom of the tiers for exactly the opposite reason. The pain is real and the imaging is often clean, which leaves the file resting on your own account of it and on the treatment record. That is also why gaps in treatment cost these claims more than they cost a fracture claim: with no objective finding, consistent treatment is the evidence.

At the top end, a spinal cord injury runs from roughly $2,000,000 to $8,000,000 in this dataset, not because the multiplier is three times a fracture multiplier, but because the underlying economic loss includes lifetime care and lost earning capacity rather than a course of physiotherapy.

Each range on this page describes what claims of that injury class have typically resolved at, not what your claim is worth. Two people with the same diagnosis routinely settle years and six figures apart because of fault, venue, policy limits, and the quality of their medical record.

Policy limits in particular put a ceiling on the majority of claims that no valuation method can lift. A claim that prices at $180,000 against a $50,000 policy with no other recoverable defendant is, in practice, a $50,000 claim.

Use the tier to find the right starting range, then run your own bills and lost income through the calculator on any of these pages to see how your documented losses move it.

The ranges on this page assume the other side is wholly responsible. Most claims are not that clean, and your share of the blame comes off the top in almost every state. Across the 50 states and DC, 11 jurisdictions reduce your award by your percentage without ever barring it, 25 bar recovery once your share passes 50 percent, 10 bar it once your share reaches 50 percent, and five end the claim entirely at any fault at all.

That last group matters more than its size suggests. In Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia, a tier 5 injury with a seven-figure range is worth nothing if you are found one percent responsible, which is why offers in those five jurisdictions can look low on facts that would settle well elsewhere. the contributory negligence rule sets out how that plays in practice.

The order of operations is worth knowing, because it is counterintuitive. Your fault share is deducted first and any statutory cap is applied to what is left, not the other way round. On a heavily contested claim the cap frequently never binds at all, since the fault reduction has already brought the figure below it. a statutory damage cap works through that sequence.

Every range on this page is theoretical until you file in time. The statute of limitations is the one deadline in an injury claim with no partial credit: a claim worth $400,000 the day before it expires is worth nothing the day after.

The general personal injury deadline runs from one year to six across the 50 states and DC. Twenty-five jurisdictions sit at two years and 17 at three, which is where most people's assumption comes from, but Kentucky and Tennessee allow only one. the state rules table carries the figure and the statute for each.

The general deadline is also not always the one that governs you. Medical malpractice, wrongful death, and any claim against a city, county or state body frequently run on separate and shorter clocks, and a claim against a government entity can require written notice within months rather than years. Check the state page before relying on the general number, and treat a suspected government defendant as urgent rather than routine.