WHAT IS MY CASE
ACTUALLY WORTH?

The three components

Economic damages are the calculable losses: medical bills to date, the cost of future treatment, lost wages, lost earning capacity if you can't return to the same work, property damage, and out-of-pocket costs like prescriptions and transportation to appointments.

Non-economic damages cover pain, suffering, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional distress. California places no cap on these in ordinary injury cases — medical malpractice is a separate regime with its own limits.

Punitive damages are rare and require proof of oppression, fraud, or malice. Drunk driving cases sometimes support them. Most cases don't.

What actually moves the number

Injury severity and permanence. A fracture requiring surgical hardware is valued differently from a strain that resolves in six weeks. Permanent impairment, scarring, and ongoing treatment needs raise value substantially.

The treatment record. Not just the total billed, but consistency. Gaps in treatment, missed appointments, and inconsistent complaints are used aggressively by the defense.

Clarity of fault. A rear-end collision with a police report assigning fault is worth more than a disputed intersection case with no witnesses, all else equal.

Your own comparative fault. California reduces recovery by your percentage of responsibility.

Available insurance. This is the constraint nobody expects. If the at-fault driver carries California's minimum policy and has no assets worth pursuing, that policy is often the practical ceiling regardless of how badly you were hurt. Your own underinsured motorist coverage may become the more important source.

Venue and the defendant. Who the defendant is and where the case would be tried both affect what a claim is worth.

Whether your lawyer will actually file. Carriers track which firms try cases and which always settle. It shows up in the offers.

Why the number changes over time

Early on, a case has a range, not a value. Two things have to happen before a real number exists.

First, you need to reach maximum medical improvement — the point where you've either recovered or your condition has stabilized enough that doctors can say what your future looks like. Settling before that means guessing at your own future medical needs, and you absorb the cost if you guess low.

Second, liability has to be pinned down: records obtained, witnesses interviewed, sometimes experts retained.

An honest lawyer will tell you early what the case looks like and what might change it, then give you a real number when the facts support one.

Why online calculators don't work

Settlement calculators typically multiply your medical bills by some figure between 1.5 and 5. That formula is a rough negotiating heuristic, not a valuation method, and it ignores fault allocation, policy limits, treatment quality, venue, permanence, and the actual mechanics of what you can prove.

It's also worth knowing that the amount billed for your treatment is often not the number that matters. California law limits what a plaintiff can recover for medical expenses in ways that turn on what was actually paid or accepted, not what was charged. That single issue can move a case's value by tens of thousands of dollars, and no calculator accounts for it.