Determining the Value of Your Injury Settlement...

The world of injury settlements should be well on its way to being demystified. By now you've got a pretty good understanding of what's needed to make an insurance claim. You should also know what to do and what to say to make that claim stick in various situations. Now we need to figure out exactly how to place a value on your damages.

There's a hidden truth in this matter. Your settlement doesn't have an exact worth. No injury settlement does, or ever will. In the insurance claim business, there's too many non-monetary factors needing to be given a cash value. Since no two people will agree on what these cash values are, reaching a final amount isn’t a perfect science.

Adjusters do have formulas that help them. And if you can understand these formulas, you’ll be better off going into your negotiations. Despite common belief, these formulas aren’t part of some well kept secret. You don’t have to be in the insurance business to know how they work, and you don’t have to be a lawyer to use them.

The truth is, anyone can follow a few basic concepts and arrive at an injury settlement figure on their own. All that’s needed is the total of the special damages, and then a way of determining a dollar value on damages like pain and suffering.

Granted, the more experience you have, the easier it'll be knowing the range of these figures. However, for the kind of insurance claim you're most likely to deal with, the amounts won’t be high enough for the lack of experience to matter. But, as noted in the first section, if your case involves very high damages it's best to talk to a lawyer before approaching an insurance company.

When trying to come up with an injury settlement figure, there's one important thing to keep in mind overall... What are the liable parties' actual responsibilities?

First, any money lost in relation to your injury must be repaid. This includes bills you or your insurance company paid, and wages you lost.

Then, the liable party must pay for pain and suffering. This includes pain and suffering you've already experienced and may experience in the future, if your injury is long-term or permanent.

The liable party is also responsible for emotional damages and missed experiences, whether educational, social or family related.

In the next few sections we'll look at how this is all put together in the damages formula. Your final numbers won’t necessarily be the actual amount of the settlement you receive, but it's a beginning point for starting negotiations of your injury settlement.

Still have questions about how much your injury settlement is worth? Click Here.


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