How Does The Value of A Car Accident Get Determined?

Almost every potential client that consults with a personal injury lawyer has this question in his or her mind: How much is my claim worth?

What is the primary factor in a consideration of a car accident’s value?

• What sort of insurance coverage did the at-fault driver have?
• What level of coverage was provided by the policy limits on that same driver’s insurance policy?

What additional factors get examined during the determination of a car accident’s value?

What items that were the property of the plaintiff got damaged during the accident? What medical expenses did the plaintiff have to pay, after being injured by the car crash? That would include all doctor’s visits, all laboratory work, all visits to testing or imaging facilities, all types of rehabilitation, all treatments, and all types of medical equipment.

Was the injured victim employed at the time of the accident? How much income did the victim lose, while recovering from his or her injuries? Were those same injuries so bad that they seemed capable of putting an end to all of the plaintiff’s chances for finding a future opportunity to earn a living?

How does the victim’s pain and suffering play into the determination of the car accident’s value?

To what extent has the victim complained about experiencing painful sensations? To what extent has the victim pointed-out times when he or she had to live with a high level of discomfort? Had the accident forced the victim to deal with mental or psychological effects?

The insurance company seeks answers to the above questions. It uses those answers to come up with a figure that can represent the level of the victim’s pain and suffering. That figure is usually a number between 1.5 and 5. Whenever victims have suffered a great deal of pain and discomfort, that same figure might be a number between 6 and 10. Insurance companies refer to such a figure as a multiplier. The multiplier for a given car accident becomes one factor in an equation. The other factor is the sum total for all of the victim’s medical expenses.

Car Accident Lawyer in Waterloo knows that after the multiplication of those two factors has been completed, the insurance company has part of a calculation completed. It then needs to add to the calculated product the amount of income lost by the injured victim. The result of that summation gives a rough estimate of the car accident’s value. Still, that might not be the accident’s true value. It could be that the plaintiff committed an act that qualified as contributory negligence. If that were shown to be the case, then the accident’s true value would be less than the one that was based on just the calculations.