As personal injury lawyers, we hear this all the time – what is my case worth? The standard lawyer answer to the question, what is my case worth, is it depends. Although that’s our answer to most questions, it’s not being dodgy lawyers; it’s true.

The answer to the question, how much is my case worth depends on many factors. Aspects of the case – who, what, where, when – impact case value. It depends on other factors independent of the case too. And, the answer changes over time as new information emerges and a case progresses. It can be millions one day and next to nothing years later. Today we riff about the topic general, but raise awareness of a few invidious elements to the answer as well.

Case Value Depends on Several Factors

What your case is “worth” depends on several factors. First, let’s start with the framing of the question. In some ways, it dehumanizes the issue. That reflects the inherent nature of our civil justice system.

We can’t give back severed limbs in amputation cases. A lawsuit will not resolve brain injuries. Suing Amazon will not heal broken bones from a defective electric scooter. An aggravated family will not be able to resurrect their loved ones after a nursing home bedsore death trial verdict.

Rather, we seek compensation for economic losses and non-economic losses, pain and suffering. No recovery is going to be “worth” what our clients have been through. Nonetheless, we obtain monetary compensation when someone suffers an injury due to negligence or defective products. Ideally, with the monetary compensation comes some restorative justice as well; perhaps systematic change within an organization or institution, corrective and preventive actions to avoid another person being hurt.  But at the end of the day, each case has a particular monetary value because that’s all we can do to try to make people whole.

So how much is my personal injury case worth is a tough question. A mentor one of us had used to answer the question how much is my case worth by saying, however much a jury is willing to award or the defendant and insurance company is willing to pay. That fundamentally is the answer. So let’s look at how they may arrive at that answer by exploring specific factors impacting case value.

Some Factors that Impact Case Value

There are several kinds of personal injury cases. Nursing home abuse cases, trucking accidents, product liability lawsuits, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, medical malpractice, the list goes on. Each kind of case has its own subset of law and practice.

Each type of personal injury law is different, but we will provide some information here from the perspective of two general kinds, single-event and mass torts. The first group is what most people think about when they think about personal injury lawyers. Motor vehicle collisions like trucking “accidents,” nursing home abuse cases, and burn injuries from a fallen power wire, defective Power XL air fryer, or pressure cooker explosion.

The second group involves product liability cases, mass torts or toxic torts for example where large numbers of people suffer similar injuries. This includes pharmaceutical cases like Singulair and medical device cases like the Imeplla recall and Biozorb cases. This differing case types can impact the answer to, how much is my case worth?

Single event case factors

In your average personal injury case like a motor vehicle case involving a truck accident, a trucking accident lawyer will look at how much there is in medical bills from the related injuries. A truck accident attorney will consider if there are future medical treatments necessary, and if so, how much those may cost.

Similarly, a trucking collision attorney will analyze past and future wage loss. The latter can be difficult and require specialized expert testimony. This is an area where personal injury lawyers can distinguish themselves – the retention of qualified, exception experts and working with them to produce excellent expert reports and give compelling testimony. The foregoing is generally true for most other single event cases.

Mass tort case factors

Mass torts are far more complicated. In some cases, there is no such analysis of past or future medical expenses or income loss. There may be discovery exchanged about these matters, but because there are so many cases at issue, pure economics can come into play a bit more.

Companies must consider the cost of litigating and trying the cases. With defense lawyers billing hundreds, even thousands of dollars an hour, the cost of litigation for three, five, even ten years can compel settlement. How much they are willing to pay, however, depends on internal business considerations maybe more so than individual case factors.

The shear number of cases impacts plaintiffs’ side as well. Courts simply cannot litigate and try thousands of cases expeditiously using current means. There are tools we can use to be more efficient, but the system has not caught up to technology, and the law and rules may not exist to force use of them anyway. Consequently, plaintiffs’ case values may be far less than they are actually “worth.” A plaintiff with cancer facing the end of life having waited five years for recovery may accept that the case is “worth” $40,000 just to be done and avoid more effort and time, or dying before receiving anything. That’s a sad reality we must deal with in some cases.

Pain and Suffering

The wild card in both groups of cases is the value of non-economic damages. That includes pain and suffering, loss of a loved (e.g., loss of solatium), or injury to a marriage (loss of consortium). This category of damages present both challenges and opportunities for a personal injury attorney.

Years ago, insurance companies and/or personal injury lawyers employed “multipliers.” A formula may have been three times “specials,” or economic damages. So if a person had $5,000 in medical bills, pain and suffering was “worth” $15,000, and the case was “worth” $20,000 (or $15,000 depending on how one applied the principle). Several other techniques exist.

Some present “per diem” arguments in closing argument at trial, for example. They may say, plaintiffs suffered for two weeks after the back pain, leg soreness, and headaches. Minimum wage is $15/hour, so ($15/hr  x 16 waking hours a day x 14 days) the pain and suffering is worth $3,360. A counter argument might be, well the defense expert earns $750/hour for just reading documents and testifying, so it should be (16 hours/day x 224 hours x $750) $168,000, because that’s a lot worse and more grueling. These are not ones we use because we employ the latest trial techniques and conduct our own studies; nonetheless, they evidence ways folks try to determine value for this category of damages in personal injury cases.

The approaches to coming up with a number are limited only by one’s creativity. They may also be limited by state law or rule within a specific court. In some states a personal injury lawyer may be able to request a specific number, while in others, the personal injury attorney cannot.

A personal injury lawyer on either side, plaintiff or defense, will consider other factors. One such example is prior jury verdicts concerning similar injuries. They may conduct focus groups or mock trials to test outcomes. Some personal injury lawyers are now using AI to get data points regarding how a jury may value a case.

Other Factors That Answer the Question, What is My Case Worth

We looked at one side of the equation, the injuries at issue and the amount of damages at issue. That is analogous to the assets side of a ledger or similar to the income side of a budget. But as you can tell by now, the facts of the case matter. How bad the conduct was can impact the value of the case. Intentional, truly horrible conduct can give rise to punitive damages – damages intended to punish the defendant to deter others from acting the same way in the future. That can increase the value of the case. Focusing on the defendant provides some other factors that impact the value of a case.

Defenses and Discount Factors

Just because someone acted negligently does not mean that’s the end of the analysis. A negligent party has the right to defend themselves. In the state of Maryland for example, we have a law called contributory negligence. If the injured party caused or contributed to the “accident”, or injuries, that person could get zero.

For example from a real world case (not one we handled) – a woman walks in front of a parked school bus to cross the street and help a child cross and get on the bus. A car violates the law and passes the school bus despite its flashing lights and extended stop sign. The car hits the woman. Simple case, right? The driver breached the duty to obey traffic laws and wait behind the bus. The driver hit the woman, she was injured. Medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering; she should get paid. Nope. She got zero. That’s because the jury heard testimony that she never looked both ways before she crossed the road. Thus, she contributed so found the jury.

In most other states, the law is not this harsh. Juries decide how at fault a plaintiff was and then discount the award by that percentage. Those laws are general comparative fault states. If a plaintiff found a personal injury lawyer long after the injuries, there may be a statute of limitations defense at issue. Every claim must be filed within a certain amount of time. If not, the claim may be lost forever. Thus, this defense may make a case worth much less, if the claim is even viable.

There are other more complex cases in product liability cases. Legal ones like preemption, which basically says you cannot sue a company because there is a federal agency regulating them (that’s a simplified, conceptual definition.) Others like the state-of-the-art defense end up in a battle of the experts at trial.

For these reasons, a personal injury lawyer will consider available defenses and factor that into the case value analysis. Sometimes it’s a “discount” factor. Maybe the case is “worth” $100,000, the full limits available under the insurance policy. Nevertheless, there are some risks of losing on a defense. The case is therefore worth $80,000, as an educated guess factoring in the chances of the defense working and the plaintiff getting less or even zero.

Other discount factors besides legal defenses include the strength and weakness of the available evidence. Some doctors do not want to get involved in their patients’ personal injury claims. They may be unwilling to testify or providing hedging testimony.

Who is Involved, Where and How it Will be Resolved, and How Far You’re Willing to Go

Fundamentally, a personal injury matter is a dispute between two parties. The injured party believes someone hurt them. That other person or entity may disagree entirely, may think its complicated, or may concede they did, but think it’s simply not that bad and not worth what the injured party wants. When such a dispute reaches a personal injury law firm, they must evaluate the parties as well to factor that into the answer to the question, how much is my case worth.

How a plaintiff presents at a mediation, deposition, or trial is therefore another factor. Whether right or wrong, it is considered (not discriminatory factors, just more behavioral, credibility wise). Some plaintiffs are stoic. They cannot or will not articulate what happened to them or the depth of the impact upon them. Testifying, “it hurt for a few months,” does not connect with a jury and elicit a large pain and suffering verdict. Providing specific examples of when and how it hurt, and how the pain took away meaningful life experiences can multiple the value of a case. Sometimes it’s more than appearance, manners, and communication skills.

Some clients do not want to engage in the adversarial process that comes with the territory. They do not have to in some cases. Sometimes they are only willing to speak in confidence and go through a private alternative dispute resolution process with us. We do not file a lawsuit for them, which creates a public record (in some cases we can do so without naming them). Rather than sue, we negotiate with the other side confidentially and there is no public record. That may be worth more or less depending on the specifics of the case.

We must also resolve some client disputes via arbitration because of an agreement a client signed at the time they were injured. This happens for example in electric scooter rental cases. Other clients do not want to have a defense personal injury lawyer depose them or go to trial.

Our firm handles all of these nuances with confidentiality and care. These client-specific factors, and the “where” regarding the dispute is resolved, including the specific place where the court is located in some lawsuits, further impact the value of the case. Client-specific factors sometimes arise in other ways.

Plaintiffs sometimes do not listen to their personal injury lawyers. The personal injury attorney may caution against posting to social media during the case. Nonetheless, a plaintiff posts pictures dancing around on multiple vacations. It makes the case more difficult – and worth less – when that plaintiff comes to trial and asks for a lot in pain and suffering when they have been showing the world they’ve been having what seems like a wonderful time these past few months. Of course life is more complicated and things can be explained, but for a personal injury attorney, plaintiff or defense, that may give rise to a “discount” factor.

Similarly, public press can impact the value of a case as a corporate defendant may want to get the story out of the news. Now, we cannot exploit bad press, extort, or do inappropriate things like that, but who is involved, how it plays out, and the situs of the case all impact how much a personal injury case is worth.

Damage Caps

You now know that where a case is and what law applies are major factors in answering the question, how much is my case worth. State law has significant impact in many cases. In addition to the available claims and defenses that can increase or defense the value of a personal injury case, there are other implications arising out of state law.

Some state legislatures have decided to answer the question, how much is my case worth, themselves. They passed laws that cap how much a plaintiff can recover. A personal injury lawyer has to look at what state’s law applies and see if that state has a damages cap. That can cap the amount of damages for non economic damages (pain and suffering) for example. Some states do this for all cases, while others do it for specific kinds of cases like medical malpractice or for specific kinds of claims.

Another example are claims against the state or federal government. You cannot just sue the government for personal injury claims. It is not that simple. Because of a legal doctrine, sovereign immunity, the government has to allow claims against it. There is also a process that plaintiffs must follow.

On the federal side, one such law is the Federal Torts Claims Act“(FTCA”). Here, a veteran may sue the government for medical malpractice. The government gets to respond to a claim before plaintiff files suit. Sometimes a case may be “worth” less because it is likely to be paid through such a process rather than litigated all the way through to a verdict because there is value in getting paid sooner than later, with less burden on the plaintiff, or because a judge decides FTCA cases as opposed to a jury (we’re not saying that, but some may hold that view). Sometimes, the law also caps how much a plaintiff can recover.

For example, on the state and local government side, there are State and Local Government Torts Claim Acts. In Maryland, the damages a plaintiff can recover from a local government for some personal injuries is $400,000 in total. So even if your case is worth $10,000,000, it may actually only be “worth” $400,000 because you cannot possibly recover more by law.

Additionally, while not a cap per se, state laws impact the value of a case in other ways. Some states allow plaintiffs to recover the amount a healthcare provider billed rather than what the health insurer paid. These nuances are things a personal injury lawyer factors into the answer to the question, how much is my case worth.

Insurance Coverage Amounts and Assets

A personal injury lawyer for the plaintiff has to consider the foregoing practical factors when answering this question. There are additional pragmatic considerations that come into play when answering the question, how much is my case worth.

Most of us practice on a contingency. You’ve heard the ads, we don’t get paid unless we win your case. We get a percentage of the recovery. No recovery, no money for us. (A personal injury lawyer can structure it in different ways, so not necessarily).

In such situations, we often pay expenses too, and then recoup those later from the recovery. Thus, we assume a lot of risk. We are spending time, and money because we are also paying salaries to all the folks involved in the case. We may also advance the costs of investigating and litigating the case. Filing fees, medical record retrieval fees, technology fees, court reporter and transcript fees, and money for experts to review and testify in support of the case are just a few examples. Even small, routine “single event” cases can have thousands in expenses before they resolve. Mass tort cases often incur millions. That money is out of pocket for years before there is a recovery. If there is no recovery, most times clients are not responsible for any of those costs. Given all this, one of the first things a personal injury lawyer may do is see how much is available in insurance coverage.

A case may be worth a lot of money when we add up the past wage loses, the past medical bills, and we forecast future wage loss and future medical expenses. The underlying experience may have been traumatic and painful. But as the saying goes, you can’t get blood from a stone. A ten million dollar verdict may have significant meaning in some ways, but it means nothing to a client trying to pay co-pays or save their house from foreclosure because they cannot work due to their injury if there is no actual money to recover. You may be surprised, but that happens more often than you would think.

Hence, the answer to the question, how much is my case worth, depends in part on how much is available to compensate you. That depends on whether there is insurance coverage available. Whether the defendant had it, whether it covers this situation, and if so, how much it provides for the claims a personal injury lawyer can bring. If there is more than one claim, it is even more complicated.

Many insurance policies have a per individual and aggregate coverage limit. Your auto insurance may be 100/300 policy. That means, $100,000 for each injured person in a specific collision, and $300,000 for all the people injured in that collision. So if you collided into a car with five people in it, those five have to divide up the $300,000.

When you have catastrophic injuries – loss of life or limb for example – the case value often exceeds insurance policy limits. The answer to the question, how much is my case worth, then may be how much coverage there is. A personal injury lawyer may also investigate and consider the defendant’s assets. In most motor vehicle cases that is not likely a factor. Most people are not sitting on lots of money, and at least some of us personal injury lawyers or clients are not looking to destroy people’s lives and take what little someone has for life when they make a mistake. How much, how far we take it, how aggressive we are, etc. depends on the conduct at issue, the injuries at issue, and other factors. Some individuals and companies, however, may have other assets besides the insurance policy. That can increase the number because there is actually something to recover because the amount of insurance available.

Recent Trends that Impact Case Value

As explained, the answer to how much is my case worth depends in part on how much there is to compensate you. Consider a routine car collision case to illustrate the point.

If the negligent driver has no real assets, then all there is available is their car insurance (any maybe homeowners’ insurance or an “umbrella” policy). A personal injury attorney can likely face a situation where a client has hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, and won’t work again and therefore lose hundreds of thousands more in wage loses over their lifetime before we even get to the millions of dollars warranted for pain and suffering. Assume this is a case Maryland law governs.

Maryland state law requires drivers to only have $30,000 in coverage. So the answer to that family’s question, how much is my case worth, is millions, but, likely $30,000. You can sue the driver, win at trial and get a $5,000,000 verdict. Then what? The insurance company tenders the $30,000. Half that money will likely go to the personal injury lawyer for fees and expenses. It could easily be more given the severity of the injuries. The insurance company, Medicare, or Medicaid likely paid for the past medical bills. They will have a right to that money too. A personal injury lawyer may be able to take that 5 million dollar verdict and work with a collections attorney to collect on the judgment. They may try to seize assets, garnish money in accounts and pay checks, but in most cases, there’s little to nothing to get and the costs outweigh the benefits. So the answer to the question, how much is my case worth, is really, $30,000, or even zero in effect because there’s not enough to go around between the cost of litigating and the third party interests in it.

Yes, that is crazy, heartless, unsettling, etc., but that is real world experience we have lived through. We have spent countless hours in denial researching the law, speaking with experts and other attorneys, and otherwise trying to disprove that reality, but to borrow from Oliver Anthony, “Wish I could just wake up and it not be true[,] But it is, oh, it is.”

It gets worse. Not everyone has insurance. Not all companies or professionals have to have insurance. We have sued medical device companies only to learn there is no insurance, or assets. Yes, that’s true too. Designing, marketing, and selling a medical device implanted into a human and having no way to pay for any injuries caused is a real thing. There may be funds and remedies available, but they may not be helpful for significant injury cases.

To be clear, as imperfect as our system is, we respect it, honor it, and believe it is superior to the past and most others. Nevertheless, there are challenges and improvements needed for sure. With this foundation, let’s turn to some recent trends we have seen of late that help answer the question, how much is my case worth?

Wasting Policies

A personal injury attorney may be happy to learn a defendant has an insurance policy. They can recover something for the injured party and help them find closure. When suing companies, however, even when there is insurance to cover the personal injuries at issue, it can get complicated.

Some companies have what’s referred to as a wasting policy, a burn policy, or an exhausting policy. An insurance policy is not a blank check. An insurance company likely cannot survive if it takes on unlimited liabilities for limited cost. Said more clearly, we pay premiums for a specific amount of coverage – more coverage costs more money – but there has to be a limit or the insurance companies could fold (we know, we know, many are multi-billion dollar companies, but this is one of the justifications asserted). The cost of premiums is part of the analysis as well. Basic math and economics nonetheless apply to insurance.

Insurance generally covers two things: the cost of the recovery against the insured (so a settlement or verdict) and the cost to defend the insured. They are two distinct things. One pays for whatever the injured party gets, and the other pays for the process to get it to them. So the latter means things like a defense lawyer.

Some insurance products bundle the two – the cost of the claim and the cost of defense – together. Let’s explain by way of example.

Assume a company makes artificial hips and knees. Surgeons implant thousands of hip implants into people. Years later they fail. Surgeons remove the failed hip implants via a second painful removal surgery. People sue because they missed work for weeks, suffered in pain, and don’t have the same quality of life after having a hip that didn’t do what it was supposed to do and maybe poisoned them because of the metal the hip implant contained. That hip implant company had a $1,000,000 wasting policy.

People sue the company. Litigation lasts years. Defense lawyers are billing against that policy for years. Those bills come off the $1,000,000 leaving next to nothing for the victims. Yup, that happens and we’ve dealt with it; we are dealing with it again right now.

But wait, there’s more. What happens then? The policy is gone; the defense product liability lawyers got paid and there’s not much left. Well the company is exposed. If there are jury trials, a plaintiff with a favorable verdict can try to seize the company’s assets – property, IP, account receivables, etc. What do you think happens next? If you had, they claim bankruptcy on your bingo card, you win. Now all those assets are bundled together and divided up between the personal injury claimants and other creditors. The answer to the question, how much is my case worth, is now very different years later than it was when the product liability lawyer first took the case many years earlier.

Bankruptcy and Endless Litigation

Bankruptcy is entirely permissible and proper. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using the bankruptcy courts. People have differing moral views on the topic, for sure. But if a company faces far more in liability exposure that it has assets, it may be legally permissible. (We are not bankruptcy lawyers, but we deal with the consequences often.) When and how they go about it as in the preceding example may be open to debate. There have also been some seemingly invidious events of late.

A more recent trend has been referred to as the Texas two step. A company facing liability for personal injury claims related to a failed product for example may create a subsidiary or spin-off company just for that product. The new company has no real assets, but has all those liabilities. It then claims bankruptcy. This has been happening in the Talc litigation for years now. So women with ovarian cancer allege baby powder caused their cancer and years of pain and suffering. They have been waiting for what seems like a decade to resolve their cases. After many verdicts, the company pulled the Texas two-step. Not once, but multiple times. This third one is pending. So what is my case worth changes over time and may be different from one year to the next depending on how the defendants approach it.

Some companies will litigate cases for decades if they can. They are well capitalized and litigation costs are not a deterrent. It does not matter if liability and the science and medicine concerning the claim injuries and damages is admissible. They may fight each individual case. There may be good reasons for this, and maybe some not so good reasons. We pass no judgment or speculate about intent here, though we certainly have opinions. Admittedly, part of the problem can be unreasonable demands or fraudulent claims. Thus, systemic imperfections impact case value. While we have strong opinions about these matters and much can be written about this, suffice it to say, the parties can litigate and try cases for years and wear one another down. That impacts case value.

Now for the worst of the worst we’re seeing. Many personal injury lawyers cringe at the question how much is it worth. There is no real answer. We respect from where it comes. We agree clients deserve and need to know to some degree, but it depends, and it is complicated and impacted by factors beyond our control.

The answer to what is my case worth vacillates over time. As the case evolves, the opinion changes. There are objective and subjective factors. But what makes the question cringy is how it can vary and change on a dime. And what we have been seeing of late is disheartening, which we’ll explain by way of a hypothetical example that combines two of the aforementioned factors – a wasting or exhausting insurance policy and bankruptcy.

We might litigate a product liability case for some time. Then it emerges there is a wasting policy. That changes how we approach the case – trying to preserve available funds for our clients. It impacts the case value too.

As a quick aside, Maryland has a law that requires auto insurance companies to disclose how much insurance coverage there is even before suit is filed for this very reason, in part. So a personal injury lawyer can adapt the strategy to maximize recovery for the client. We may not go hire a bunch of experts as we ordinarily would if there is limited coverage because then the client will see very little if we do and then recover that small amount. We do not have this law in other cases like nursing home, medical malpractice, and product liability cases. So we start by shooting in the dark, if you will.

Back to they hypothetical. We litigate the case for years. Incur costs. Then we learn the policy has been “burned” through by defense costs. Now the value of the case drops. There is less money to go around. The company does not then tender the policy so it can be divided up among the claimants. They keep fighting. With trial emerging, they then file bankruptcy. This is already happening, and it radically changes the answer to the question, how much is my case worth, often dropping a zero from the end, changing seven or six figure cases to five or four figure cases, notwithstanding the serious injuries at issue.

We’re waiting for the trifecta – a wasting policy, the Texas two-step, and bankruptcy. So a company with just a wasting policy, burns it, then pulls the Texas two-step, and leaves next to nothing after years of people waiting and going through a process, some dying along the way. To borrow from Farmers’ Insurance, we’ve seen a thing or two – frankly, we’ve seen a lot – and so it’s just a matter of time before this disaster comes to be. We cast no aspersions here regarding intent, but the end result is the case is worth little and the victims have been left holding the bag and that just isn’t right.

So How Much is My Case Worth?

It depends. It will change over time.

A good personal injury lawyer will be a good counselor at law. They will explain the various factors at issue in your case. A good personal injury attorney will keep you updated on developments impacting case value, though there may be long lulls.

In our humble opinion, a good personal injury lawyer won’t portend to know precisely how much your personal injury case is worth to the dollar in most cases, but will educate and inform you along the way or as you ask. In many cases we can be specific with some aspects of the number, and in some cases, provide a reasonable range or even a direct answer because it is worth the damages cap. But in others, well, it depends.

Choose a firm that understands the many hills and valleys, has bridged troubled waters, and will educate emphasize as you navigate along with them.