Estimate Disclaimer

The number at the end of the assessment is a preliminary, educational range, produced by a fixed, published set of rules from the answers you gave. It is calculated, not quoted from a table, and it changes with every answer. It exists to help you understand how the factors that drive claim value interact, and nothing more.

How the range is calculated

The estimator applies the same damages formula that insurance adjusters and personal-injury firms use to open a valuation:

• Economic damages. Medical billing to date, projected remaining treatment, and income lost to time off work. Lost-income figures are anchored on national median weekly earnings published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Non-economic damages. Pain and suffering, valued as a multiplier of medical damages. The multiplier normally falls between 1.5 and 5, set by injury severity, the treatment actually received and documented, the specific injuries reported, and the type of collision.
• Comparative fault. Any share of fault you describe as your own reduces the result, in proportion to that share.
• A range, not a point. The result is published as a band around the calculated figure, and that band widens when your answers are approximate.

Where state law changes the answer

Identical injuries are worth materially different amounts in different states, and in some states they are worth nothing at all. The estimate is adjusted for the state your ZIP code falls in, using four rules:

• The negligence rule. Most states reduce recovery by your share of fault. Some bar it entirely once your share reaches 50% or 51%. Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia still follow contributory negligence, where being even slightly at fault can bar recovery completely.
• No-fault thresholds. Twelve states require an injury to cross a statutory threshold before pain and suffering can be claimed from the at-fault driver at all.
• The filing deadline. Personal-injury deadlines run from one year to six depending on the state. Where the dates you gave appear to fall outside that deadline, no range is quoted.
• Minimum liability coverage. What a claim is worth and what is actually collectable are different questions. Where the calculated figure exceeds the coverage your state requires drivers to carry, the estimate says so.

Where a rule means a number would mislead you, the tool shows no number and explains why. Legal figures are reviewed against current state law each time the model version changes.

Why a range, not a number

No honest tool can value a claim precisely from eight questions. Real case value depends on medical records, liability evidence, the policy limits actually available, how fault is finally apportioned, future treatment, lost earning capacity, the venue, and negotiation. None of that is visible to an online form. Two claims with identical answers here can settle very differently.

What the estimate is not

• Not legal advice, and not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney.
• Not an appraisal, offer, or promise that any amount will be recovered.
• Not a statement that your claim qualifies or is within any legal deadline.
• Not a prediction of what any particular insurer or court would do.

A licensed attorney can review your actual circumstances at no cost through the free case review included with your estimate. Claim Value is not a law firm and does not provide legal services.