Have you heard or tried to use a personal injury settlement calculator? This type of device is supposed to tell you how much you may get if you obtain a settlement from a negligence claim. But, can it be accurate? Can it really tell you what to expect if you were to file a claim against someone? For those in Long Island, a personal injury settlement calculator simply is not the right route to take. A better solution is to contact an attorney who can help you to determine what is likely in your case.
For those who are at this point, and wondering if they could file a claim or get a larger settlement, our team at Siler & Ingber, LLP are the best professionals to work with and speak to instead of a basic tool.
Why Aren’t Personal Injury Settlement Calculators Accurate?
Think about your personal injury case. Perhaps someone’s dog bit you, or you were in a car accident. These accidents are very different, of course, but they vary between each other as well. For example, the type of damage you have from a dog bite is different from what someone else will experience. You may have a flesh wound while someone else has had damage to a bone or ligament. The same is true for car accidents. Everyone is different.
For this reason, there is no way that a personal injury settlement calculator can offer even a basic estimate of what you can expect if you file a claim. But, there are solutions to give you insight, such as a free case review from our Long Island personal injury team.
What Factors Impact the Value of a Personal Injury Settlement?
Insurance companies want to know what loss you suffered. However, many factors contribute to how much of a claim you will end up getting. It can be very hard to estimate this even by trained professionals. Some key factors to keep in mind include the following.
Hard Injuries
Hard injuries are some of the most common and serious injuries resulting from an incident. These are easy to diagnose through an x-ray or through the other diagnostic tests you get through your treatment. Or, some hard injuries cause serious health risk. Hard injuries are things like concussions, head injuries, and bone fractures. They can include things like spinal column and nerve damage as well.
By contrast, soft injuries can reduce the amount of your claim. These are things like bruising or muscle strain. They may also include pain-related injuries where the actual loss is hard to pinpoint.
Treatment-based Medical Bills
Sometimes, one of the best ways to see the value of a claim is to look at medical bills. It is clear that you’ve suffered financial loss if you have medical bills to back up your losses. This can also be used to show the importance of the length of your recovery. Medical bills document that you have been receiving treatment for an extended amount of time.
Permanent Damage
If you have permanent damage, you can expect that your losses will be higher and your claim higher. This can be demonstrated, for example, through loss of abilities or weakness. If this damage is likely to be permanent, it is likely to require a higher level of compensation.
Other situations can limit your claim. For example, if you have not needed prescription medications for your injury, that can indicate a reduced level of compensation. If you do not have a lot of medical debt resulting from the incident, or you did not receive much medical treatment after the incident, this, too, reduces how much of a payout the insurer will give you.
Other Factors Play a Role, Too
The amount of your personal injury claim will be impacted by other factors as well, such as whether or not you have any fault in the incident. In other cases, you may be impacted by the trustworthiness of yourself or the other party.
Because of all of these factors, a personal injury settlement calculator is not going to be an ideal tool to use. It simply cannot provide you with enough information to make it worthwhile. But, other solutions exist.
Schedule a Free Consultation with a Long Island Personal Injury Team to Learn More
Siler & Ingber, LLP provides a free case review for our clients. This is a far better way to learn what you can expect if you pursue a personal injury claim. While there is no way to know for sure what you will obtain, our 20 years of experience and aggressive litigation methods allow our team to provide you with fairly accurate information. We encourage you to call our team for a free case review. Our Long Island team is available at 877-718-6079, or you can fill out our online form for more information.