What Is the Average Personal Injury Settlement Amount in Massachusetts?
- January 16, 2025 |
- Personal Injury
It is a common question in personal injury law offices everywhere — “How much is my case worth?” The truth is that unless a personal injury attorney has spoken with you about your case and reviewed available evidence, it is impossible to get an accurate case valuation. Often, the follow-up question is, “What is the average personal injury settlement amount in Massachusetts?”
It may be a disappointing answer, but there is no reliable way to determine an average injury settlement, either. There are too many variables at play, and because many settlement agreements —particularly larger ones — are confidential, there is no reliable way to find the data needed to calculate an accurate average.
However, one thing you can do is take a close look at the circumstances of your case. When you understand which factors can influence your settlement amount and why, you can start to get a general idea of your case’s worth.
While the only way to accurately value your personal injury case is to talk to an attorney, it may be helpful to understand how attorneys estimate each case’s worth.
Typical Payouts for Massachusetts Personal Injury Settlements
Usually, the only personal injury settlements or verdicts that appear in the news are in the millions of dollars. While it is possible to secure this kind of compensation in some cases, multimillion-dollar verdicts are not the norm. Personal injury settlements vary much more than many realize. On the low end, you might walk away with a few thousand dollars, and on the high end, you may walk away with millions.
What Factors Influence the Value of Your Settlement?
Understanding What Shapes Your Compensation
What is the average personal injury settlement amount in Massachusetts? You might not be able to directly answer this question, but you can discover the elements of your case that help determine the compensation you receive.
The Severity of Your Injuries
Someone who suffers whiplash and a broken arm in a car accident would likely receive a much lower settlement than someone who was paralyzed by a spinal cord injury. When it comes to determining compensation, lawyers, insurance companies, and the courts consider both the short-term and long-term effects the injury has on your life.
For example, if you have a very painful injury that impacts your quality of life as you heal, the pain you experience and its effect on you would likely increase your settlement to an extent. However, you are more likely to receive much greater compensation if you have an injury that will permanently affect you.
Your Medical Expenses
Your short-term and long-term medical expenses have a very significant impact on your total settlement. Exorbitant medical bills are one of the primary factors that lead people to file personal injury claims.
Adding up all the medical expenses you have had since your accident is not difficult. However, compensation often includes future medical bills as well. Estimating the cost of future medical care can be a challenge, but your attorney might consult medical experts to come up with a realistic number.
It is also worth noting that if you do not have significant medical bills, you are unlikely to have a viable personal injury case at all. It takes time and resources for a personal injury lawyer to build your case, so to make it worth their time, you must have a certain amount of accident-related costs to recover. If you are involved in a car accident, but your only medical bill is a $50 urgent care copay, a lawsuit is unlikely to be in your best interests or your lawyer’s.
Your Lost Income
In most cases, if you suffer a very serious injury, you will be left unable to work for a time. The inability to work combined with climbing medical bills is often enough to cause significant financial hardship. Compensation for lost income is a particularly important part of most personal injury cases, but the amount of compensation can vary greatly based on your level of disability and the amount you were earning prior to the accident.
You do not have to be completely disabled to recover compensation for past and future lost income. For example, imagine you have a job involving physical labor that pays you $50,000 per year. You have to have your leg amputated after an accident, so you can no longer perform the same kind of work. You are able to work in the office for the same company, but that job pays $35,000. In this instance, you might receive compensation for the difference between the two amounts ($15,000) each year you work.
How Negligent the Other Party Was
Sometimes, the extent of the at-fault party’s negligence can have an impact on your settlement. For example, with all other factors being equal, the at-fault party’s insurance company will likely be willing to settle for a larger amount if the driver who hit you was drunk and speeding than if they accidentally struck your car due to poor visibility.
The At-Fault Party’s Insurance Coverage
In most cases, when you file a personal injury claim, you are seeking compensation from the at-fault party’s insurance company — not the person themselves. That means their total insurance coverage may limit the amount you can recover.
If the other party’s insurance coverage is not enough to cover all of your damages, you may have other avenues to collect. If you were injured in a car accident, you might be able to file a claim with your own uninsured/underinsured motorist policy. You also might be able to directly sue the at-fault party. However, unless the person who caused the accident has considerable assets, you might have trouble recovering much from them.
Have you suffered a serious injury that was not your fault? You should not be left to handle the financial, physical, and emotional consequences alone. Let the Cava Law Firm team help you. Call us at (413) 737-3430 or (413) 781-CAVA (2282) to schedule a free case review.
Any Negligence on Your Part
Massachusetts is known as a “modified comparative negligence” state. That means if your negligence contributed to your accident in some way, you may still be able to recover damages — as long as you were less than 51% at fault.
However, if you do contribute to the accident, your compensation will be reduced by your percentage of fault. For example, imagine you are a pedestrian crossing the road at a traffic signal. While you are still in the crosswalk, the traffic signal changes from “walk” to “don’t walk,” and the light for the cars traveling perpendicular to the sidewalk turns green. When you are almost all the way out of the crosswalk, an oncoming car hits you. The driver is mostly at fault because you were in the crosswalk, and cars must yield to pedestrians at crosswalks. However, because you were in the crosswalk when you were not technically supposed to be, you are determined to be 10% at fault. If your case goes to court and the judge awards you $100,000, that amount would then be reduced by 10%, meaning you would receive $90,000.
The Strength of Your Case Against the Other Party
To secure the compensation you deserve after a serious injury, you must be able to convincingly argue your case. That means the more evidence you have against the at-fault party, the better. This is an area where your choice of lawyer matters. A skilled, dedicated lawyer will be able to invest the time needed to assemble various types of evidence, including:
- Police reports or incident reports;
- CCTV footage of the incident;
- Witness statements;
- Information on the at-fault party’s history;
- Photos of the accident scene;
- Medical bills;
- Medical records;
- Proof of the wages you have lost; and
- Testimony from medical experts about the extent of your injuries.
The strength of this evidence matters even when you do not intend to take the case to court. Because having a strong case means you are more likely to win if the case goes to court, the insurance company may be willing to give you a higher settlement than it otherwise would.
Calculating Your Settlement Amount
The total compensation you receive after a personal injury is the sum of two separate calculations:
- Economic Damages (or Special Damages): Compensation for quantifiable losses
- Non-Economic Damages (or General Damages): Compensation for non-quantifiable losses.
Calculating economic damages is fairly straightforward. For example, imagine you were in a car accident several months ago. You were badly injured, but you have since healed and gone back to work. You incurred the following expenses as a result of the accident:
- $10,000 in medical bills;
- $5,000 in lost income;
- $300 in at-home medical equipment; and
- $100 in prescriptions.
These expenses total $15,400, so your economic damages (or special damages) would be $15,400.
Calculating your non-economic damages (or general damages) is much more subjective. In an effort to make it less so, insurance companies often use a “pain and suffering multiplier” when calculating your general damages (which are also commonly called “pain and suffering”).
That multiplier is usually a number between 1.5 and 5. The more severe your injury, the higher the multiplier. To calculate the value of your non-economic damages, the insurer then totals your economic damages (quantifiable losses) and multiplies them by the chosen multiplier.
Going back to the example above, because your injury was able to heal with no lasting symptoms, the insurer decides on a pain and suffering multiplier of two. To determine your general damages, the insurer multiples $15,400 by 2 to get $30,800. Because the total value of your case includes your economic and non-economic damages, the insurer adds $15,400 to $30,800 to get $46,200 — the total value of your case.
Do You Receive More Compensation if You Go to Court vs. Settling?
Often, if you win your case in court, you will be awarded more compensation than you could have gotten by settling. That may make going to court sound immediately more appealing, but the prospect of a greater reward comes with considerable risk. A verdict that goes in your favor will likely result in a high payout, but if the judge rules in favor of the other party, you could walk away with nothing.
Usually, settling proves to be the best option for both parties. If the case goes to court, insurance companies must pay their lawyers extensive legal fees, and the defendant often wants to avoid the publicity of a trial. You also avoid the nerve-racking uncertainty that comes with not knowing if you will win your case or not.
However, there are some instances where your lawyer might determine that taking the case to court is your best option. These include:
- If the insurance company is not willing to pay a fair settlement;
- If you want to hold the responsible party publicly accountable;
- If the responsible party’s actions were egregiously negligent or malicious; and
- If your case is strong enough that you are almost certain to win.
Your lawyer will only take your case to court with your permission. Before making this important decision, you should take the time to carefully consider the pros and cons of settling versus going to trial.
Have You Been Hurt Because of Another Person’s Negligence?
Winning Is NO Accident!
Once you have gotten emergency medical care and your condition has stabilized, the next best thing you can do for yourself is find a personal injury lawyer. When it comes to the total settlement amount you stand to recover, your choice of lawyer makes a difference. At Cava Law Firm, we take pride in our personalized approach to each case — and that approach gets results.
The sooner you reach out to us, the sooner we can get started on your case. If you have suffered a serious injury because someone else was careless or negligent, we want to hear from you. Call us at (413) 737-3430 or (413) 781-CAVA (2282) to schedule your free consultation today.