What Is Your Injury Claim Worth?

Every calculator on SettlementCalcUSA follows the same basic structure. First, we total your economic damages — the costs you can point to a receipt or record for: medical bills, lost wages, property damage, and similar out-of-pocket losses. Second, we estimate your non-economic damages (commonly called "pain and suffering") using one of two widely used frameworks: the Multiplier Method, which multiplies your medical bills by a factor between roughly 1.5× (minor injuries) and 5–6× (catastrophic ones), or the Per Diem Method, which assigns a daily dollar value to your pain and multiplies it by how long you suffered.

Third, we adjust the total for fault. Most states follow one of four negligence rules: pure comparative negligence (you recover something even if you're mostly at fault), modified comparative negligence with either a 50% or 51% bar (you recover nothing once your fault crosses that line), or contributory negligence (any fault at all — even 1% — can bar recovery entirely, in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington D.C.). Finally, where relevant, we apply any known caps — a state's medical malpractice damage cap, or an at-fault party's insurance policy limit — since your real-world recovery generally can't exceed either.

The result is always a range, not a single number, because that's a more honest reflection of reality: real settlements are negotiated between your attorney and an insurance adjuster (or decided by a jury), not calculated by any formula — including this one. Our range shows a conservative estimate closer to what an insurer might first offer, and a best-case estimate closer to what strong documentation and skilled negotiation might achieve.

These formulas reflect widely documented conventions in personal injury negotiation and industry practice — not a scientifically validated model, and not legal advice. What no calculator can know: the quality of your medical documentation, the specific insurer's claims-handling behavior, your local jury pool or judge, the strength of your liability evidence, or how a case-specific fact pattern might change everything. That's exactly the gap a licensed personal injury attorney fills — most offer a free initial consultation and work on contingency, meaning there's no upfront cost to find out where you actually stand.

Want the full breakdown, including every assumption baked into each calculator and where our state-rule categorizations come from? Read our Methodology & Editorial Standards page.