One of the first questions that injury victims often have when considering a personal injury claim is how much their case is worth. Even people with serious injuries, medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering often only want reasonable payments for their injuries. But calculating these damages can be more complex than you might expect.
There is no way to determine what damages are reasonable for an injury case without examining the specific facts of your case. In general, a personal injury settlement is reasonable if it covers all of your expenses – anything short of that might not be a reasonable settlement at all. The best way to know whether the offer you received is a good offer is to discuss it with an injury lawyer.
For help with your personal injury case, call our Chicago personal injury lawyers at the Rhatigan Law Offices today. Our phone number is (312) 847-5082.
What Damages Can You Claim in a Personal Injury Settlement in Chicago, IL?
After being injured in a car accident, the law allows you to claim the reasonable expenses and costs caused by your injuries. This means that any damages that result from the accident could reasonably be included in your claim for damages. Whether these damages make it through into the insurance company’s settlement offer or not will help you judge whether the offer you received is reasonable or not.
Medical Expenses
The cost of treating your injuries and helping to restore you to the state you were in before the accident is one of the major costs your settlement should include. Our Streamwood personal injury lawyers will typically look through the damages offered in a settlement to make sure that they cover not only the cost of emergency medical care you may have needed but also the cost of ambulance rides, follow-up appointments, visits to specialists, and the cost of medical devices and equipment you need (such as crutches). Any settlement that fails to cover all these damages in full is typically unreasonable.
Lost Wages
If the injuries you received in an accident prevented you from returning to work, you should be entitled to those full costs. To determine the value of past lost wages, add up all the time that you were out of work and multiply that by your normal hourly wages. If your injuries still have you out of work, you may need to estimate how much time, overall, you will end up missing at work.
If the injuries caused you to need to take a less physically demanding job with lower pay, you can claim the difference in your old and new pay. If your injuries will affect your wages in the future, keeping you from promotions and raises or putting you on permanent disability, our injury lawyers might need to hire financial experts to calculate your damages.
Pain and Suffering
Mental anguish, pain and suffering, emotional distress, and other “non-economic damages” should also be included in your settlement. Many insurance companies undercut these damages and are unwilling to compensate them in full. They may also use calculation methods that fail to fit your situation, reducing how much they offer you. Fighting to get you full compensation for pain and suffering is one of the areas that our Illinois personal injury lawyers will focus on when fighting your claim.
How to Decide if a Personal Injury Settlement in Chicago is Good or Bad
If an insurance company has offered you a settlement, you do not have to accept it. It is reasonable to tell the insurance company that you will review the offer with your attorney before accepting or rejecting the offer. The insurance company might try to pressure you into accepting but do not give in. Your attorney can go over the following factors and more to help you decide if the offer is good or bad.
Your Financial Needs
First, consider your financial needs. Personal injuries often come with high costs. Medical bills can be enormous, and they are often just the tip of the iceberg. Those with severe injuries might need long-term care, which could be extremely expensive. Your injuries might prevent you from working, costing you valuable income. If a settlement offer does not cover all your immediate financial needs, it is probably a bad offer. Ideally, you should not be left with unpaid debts and damages after accepting a settlement from an insurance company.
What does your life look like for the foreseeable future? Will there be future expenses related to your injuries today? Can you return to work as normal after you recover? We must consider future financial needs when determining whether a settlement offer is good or bad.
Next, we should consider how damages for pain and suffering should be calculated. Since these damages are highly subjective and often not tied to actual economic costs, determining their financial value can be tricky. Insurance companies often try to use whatever calculation method will yield a lower value. We should counter with a calculation method that yields a higher value. Often, the final value will be somewhere in the middle.
Caps on Damages
What kind of case do you have? Does state law place caps on the amount of damages you may recover in a civil action? If so, the insurance company likely will not pay anything above these caps. Caps may be imposed by law and describe specific monetary limits of damages awards. While these caps are common in other states, Illinois does not have statutory caps. In 2010, the Supreme Court of Illinois struck down a law that capped non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. The court reasoned that jurors ultimately decide awards of damages, and to pass laws imposing caps on damages essentially encroaches on this power and is a violation of the state constitution.
However, damages may still be limited. Generally, awards for damages must be proportionate to the case. For example, suppose a personal injury case involves economic damages worth $10,000, and the jury must decide how to evaluate non-economic damages. A non-economic damages award of $ 1 million would likely be considered overly excessive and reduced by a judge. Insurance companies follow similar rules and will generally keep compensation in line with the overall severity of the claim.
We should also think about insurance policy limits. These are not statutory caps, but they have a similar effect. Insurance companies will almost never pay beyond policy limits. Check the terms of your policy with your attorney before starting negotiations. Generally, insurance policies with higher limits are more expensive, but they may be better able to cover severe and expensive personal injury claims.
Evidence
No insurance company will pay out on a policy without evidence. We need to prove the existence, extent, and severity of your injuries so we have an accurate idea of what your damages are worth. We also need evidence of how your injuries occurred. Many insurance policies only cover injuries that arise from specific events. If your policy does not cover your accident, you might not be entitled to compensation from your insurance.
We must be realistic about what we can do with the evidence we have. We might know how valuable your damages are, but if we cannot prove it, we might be stuck. On the flip side, if we have plenty of strong evidence, we can push for greater compensation as long as it is within the limits of your insurance policy.
Talk to your attorney about what evidence you have and what evidence you might need to strengthen your claims. Strong evidence is harder for insurance companies to refute or disbelieve, and you might be in a better position to receive fair compensation.
What to Do with Unreasonable Settlement Offers in Chicago
If the insurance company or the defendant made you a settlement offer for your injury case that you suspect is too low to cover your needs in full, it can be hard to say no. Many injury victims end up accepting settlements that are too low because they need money now to cover things like rent/mortgage payments, groceries, and other day-to-day expenses. Saying no to a settlement can be difficult, but you should never accept a settlement offer that does not cover your needs.
This is why it is important to always have an attorney review your settlement offer and give you advice on your next moves. Depending on how low the offer was, there may be a few paths to take to get the damages you need:
Revise Your Claim
If there were damages that you failed to ask the insurance company for, they are not going to pay them voluntarily. In many cases, our Rockford personal injury lawyers can recalculate your damages, accounting for damages you might have missed the first time, and resubmit your amended claim. If everything goes well, simply asking for the rest of your damages might get them paid.
Negotiate with the Insurance Company
Many times, insurance companies will provide a low initial settlement offer with the hopes that you will take it and ignore the fact that it is too low. This can often be fixed by having your lawyer negotiate with the insurance company.
Once the insurance adjuster sees that you have a lawyer and your lawyer is serious about getting you the damages you deserve, they might be more willing to negotiate and increase your settlement offer. Especially once our Chicago personal injury lawyers have had the time to go over your case, we will be able to collect evidence and calculate damages in full. If the insurance company sees the weight of the evidence against them, they may be more willing to agree to a fair, reasonable settlement.
Take the Case to Court
If negotiations fail or the insurance company is still unmoved by the evidence against their insurance customer, a lawsuit might be what’s needed to get you fair compensation. Settlements can still take place at any point until the case is decided by the jury. This gives our Chicago personal injury lawyers additional tools to pressure the insurance company into a fair settlement by putting the weight of a lawsuit against them. If they still refuse to settle for a fair amount, we can fight to get you the damages at trial in front of a judge and jury.
When Taking a Personal Injury Case to Court in Chicago is a Good Idea
Filing a civil action for damages for a personal injury can be a difficult, complex, and frustrating experience. While it is worth the effort in many cases, others are not so lucky, and a positive outcome is not guaranteed. So, why would someone take this risk in the first place?
One big reason why many people sue for damages is because the settlement offered by insurance is insufficient. Insurance companies are worried more about their bottom lines than the well-being of their customers, and they will avoid paying you compensation for your personal injuries if they think they can get away with it. If they offer a low settlement and refuse to increase it, a lawsuit might be necessary for you to recover compensation that is truly fair.
Another common reason for lawsuits is that damages exceed policy limits. For example, your insurance policy might cover no more than $50,000 in damages. If you incur $100,000 in damages after a bad accident, you are still $50,000 short. In that case, you might sue the person responsible for the accident. Jury verdicts are not limited by the terms of an insurance policy, If you win, you may receive compensation for all your damages.
Sometimes, the insurance company simply refuses to believe your evidence. Insurance companies deal with fraud every day, and they tend to examine and scrutinize evidence presented by claimants heavily. If, for any reason, they do not believe your evidence, they can deny your claim. Sometimes, taking the matter to court is the only way to prove that your claims are genuine.
Call Our Chicago Personal Injury Lawyers Today
For help with your injury case, call our Naperville personal injury lawyers at (312) 847-5082 today. At the Rhatigan Law Offices, we offer free case evaluations.
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