After you or a loved one is involved in a life-changing accident, you will want to know, “How much is my case worth?” In other words, you will be interested in evaluating the value of your legal claim, whether it is a car accident or any other type of personal injury case.

Whether you are seeking compensation directly from an insurance company or hiring an attorney to file a lawsuit, many factors can affect this value. No one-size-fits-all formula can be used to make this determination. Rather, there are several factors that you or your attorney must consider in arriving at a fair value.

Components that Establish a Case’s Value

In order to have a valid, compensable claim, it is imperative that the individual who caused your harm be legally at fault and his or her actions be the cause of your damages. Breaking this down, the three critical legal components in establishing the value of your case will be:

• Liability
• Causation
• Damages

When you assess damages, you should consider:

• Property losses (particularly vehicle repair or replacement)
• Medical expenses
• Lost wages
• Pain and suffering and emotional distress
• Loss of consortium
• Punitive damages

Insurance policy limits also will be a critical factor in determining the value of your claim. The amount you can recover may be limited by the defendant’s available insurance coverage. (However, in an auto accident, you can protect yourself from underinsured or uninsured drivers by purchasing UM/UIM coverage.)

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Your lawyer should give you a range of values for your case or claim. All of the factors discussed above as well as your lawyer’s experience with juries in the case’s jurisdiction can be factors in the evaluation of your lawsuit. Your lawyer should closely examine all of these factors.

Although some lawyers may advocate the use of ratios, personal injury calculators, claim calculators, auto claim calculators, wrongful death claim calculators, damages ratios or other types of formulas found on the Internet, these programs are merely tools. They are not conclusive in determining the value of your case.

When trying to determine the value of your legal claim or lawsuit, your attorney should base his numbers on a combination of all of the factors above. Your lawyer should also be able to explain to you how these factors increase or decrease the value of your claim and discuss why your claim has the value that he or she recommends.

Keep in mind: In some instances, especially early in your case, the question, “How much is my claim or case worth?” cannot be easily answered. To obtain a meaningful answer requires analyzing many facts and much information. Most importantly, it involves using the experience of a lawyer who has handled numerous personal injury cases.