What is considered a good personal injury settlement?
Chris asked:
This was for injury from a car accident in Illinois. I was once told that a good settlement was 1.5x your medical bills. I’m looking for an “adaptable” estimate like the one above as the amount of injury can vary greatly and the medical bills are a good indication of that.
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This was for injury from a car accident in Illinois. I was once told that a good settlement was 1.5x your medical bills. I’m looking for an “adaptable” estimate like the one above as the amount of injury can vary greatly and the medical bills are a good indication of that.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:24 am
There is no magic formula for settlement because the value of a settlement is entirely subjective. If you simply take as a rigid formula 1.5 times the medical bills, you might be overlooking other possible avenues of damage calculation. This is emphasized by the fact that if the defendant is willing to settle for 1.5 times your medical bills, you are obviously overlooking some possible recovery (i.e. the defendant only settles if they think they are getting a good deal…so you might be short changing yourself if the defendant is eager to accept 1.5 times the medical bills).
Factors to consider in settlement: possibility of recovery at trail, amount of potential trial recovery, need for the money (willing to take lesser amount now or potential greater amount later), desire to end the litigation early…None of these concerns are adeqquately accounted for in a rigid formula, yet they greatly affect the settlement value of a case.