What your car accident case is worth in Los Angeles Whatever you can prove, minus what comes off.

Your case is worth the damages you can prove, reduced by your share of fault, limited by the insurance available, and then reduced again by the attorney fee, the case costs, and the medical liens. That is the whole calculation, and we will not put an average settlement figure on this page.

Why we will not publish an average

Nobody can tell you what your case is worth from a web page, and the sites that try are averaging a fender bender with a spinal fusion.

There is a second reason. Rule 7.1 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct says a lawyer may not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer’s services, and that a truthful statement is still misleading if it is presented so as to create a substantial likelihood that a reasonable person will form a conclusion with no reasonable factual foundation. An average settlement figure, next to a phone number, does that.

What California lets you recover

Civil Code section 3333 sets the measure: “the amount which will compensate for all the detriment proximately caused thereby, whether it could have been anticipated or not.” The Judicial Council’s 2026 civil jury instructions break that into the items a jury is asked to fill in. Instruction 3902 splits them into economic and noneconomic damages, which is the same split Proposition 51 (Civil Code section 1431.2) uses.

Read that table as a checklist of proof, because that is what it is. Medical expenses need records and billing. Lost earnings need pay records and, past a certain point, an employer’s statement. Lost earning capacity is its own item, and instruction 3903D says explicitly that a work history is not required, which matters for students, new parents returning to work, and people who were between jobs on the day of the crash.

Why no calculator can price your pain

Instruction 3905A tells the jury that no fixed standard exists for deciding the amount of noneconomic damages and that they must use their judgment to decide a reasonable amount from the evidence and their common sense. That is the whole of California law on pain and suffering. There is no multiplier of the medical bills in it, because there is no multiplier in the law. When an adjuster offers you 1.5 times your bills and calls it standard, that is a bargaining position, not a rule.

What fills that space is evidence a jury can picture: what you could do in June and cannot do now, the treatment you sat through, the thing you stopped doing with your kids. Details, not adjectives.

What comes off before you are paid

Damages proved is not money received. Five things happen between them, in this order, and each one has a source you can read.

1. 1
   Comparative fault comes off the top

   Comparative fault means responsibility is divided by percentage instead of being all or nothing. A jury assigns percentages, and your damages are reduced by yours. Instruction 405 puts it plainly: if the defendant proves your negligence was a substantial factor, your damages are reduced by your percentage of responsibility. Under Civil Code section 1431.2, each defendant is severally liable, meaning each pays only its own share, for noneconomic damages in proportion to its own fault.

2. 2
   Available coverage caps the rest

   For policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025, the California minimum is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident under Vehicle Code section 16056. A case worth more than the policy is still worth more, but the money has to come from somewhere else: another defendant, an employer, or your own underinsured motorist coverage under Insurance Code section 11580.2.

3. 3
   The attorney fee comes out of the gross

   Business and Professions Code section 6147 requires the contingency fee agreement to state the rate, to state how costs affect both the fee and your net recovery, and to state that the fee is not set by law and is negotiable. Failure to comply makes the agreement voidable at the client’s option.

4. 4
   Case costs come out next

   Filing fees, records, deposition transcripts, accident reconstruction, treating physician testimony. These are advanced during the case and repaid from the recovery, which is why the fee agreement has to spell out whether they come off before or after the fee.

5. 5
   Liens and reimbursement claims are paid, or reduced

   A lien is a right to be repaid out of your recovery. A health plan, a hospital, Medi-Cal, Medicare, or a workers' compensation insurer may assert one. This is the step where a good result gets made or lost, and it is the step clients hear about last.

That last step deserves its own number. Civil Code section 3040 caps a health care service plan’s lien at the lesser of what it paid and one third of the money due to you when you have an attorney, or one half when you do not. It also requires the lien to be reduced pro rata, meaning in proportion, for your reasonable attorney fees and costs under the common fund doctrine, and reduced again by any comparative fault percentage. A hospital’s lien runs under section 3045.1. Negotiating those numbers down is frequently worth more to a client than any argument about the fee percentage, which our post on how contingency fees work takes apart line by line.

What moves the number

In our files, four things change valuation more than anything a lawyer says on the phone. A medical record that starts the day of the crash instead of three weeks later. Treatment without gaps, because a quiet month gets read as recovery. A treating physician who writes down what caused what, since causation is the argument in almost every disputed claim. And documented income, which turns a lost earnings claim from a conversation into a line item.

The rest is timing. The first offer usually lands before treatment is finished, which is why it is low: it is a negotiating position, not a valuation. We get clients treated first and we do not put a number on a case we cannot yet prove. Our post on handling insurance companies after an injury covers what the adjuster is doing while you treat. Our guide on how to maximize your car accident settlement walks through the evidence side of that in detail, and the settlement calculator shows how the pieces interact.

The first offer versus what we recovered

The most useful thing we can show you is not an average. It is the distance between what a carrier first offered and what the case resolved for once the proof was built. These are our own results, and the case types are stated because the case type is the point.

A truck collision with a concussion opened at $100,000 and resolved at $6,300,000 on the eve of trial. A rear-end crash with a herniated disc opened at $31,500 and resolved at $1,250,000 after back surgery. A slip and fall with a hip replacement opened at nothing, because liability was denied outright, and resolved at $1,000,000 once the security footage came out. Different injuries, different insurers, no average worth printing.

When the math is different for you

• You were driving uninsured. Civil Code section 3333.4, Proposition 213, bars an uninsured owner or driver from recovering noneconomic damages in most cases, with an exception when the other driver was convicted of driving under the influence. Economic damages survive; the pain and suffering claim does not.
• The harm came from a health care provider. Civil Code section 3333.2 caps noneconomic damages in those cases. For cases filed on or after January 1, 2023, the cap started at $350,000, or $500,000 in a wrongful death case, and rises each January 1 toward $750,000 and $1,000,000.
• The only policy is a minimum policy. A $30,000 limit does not stretch. The questions become whether a second defendant exists, whether the driver was working at the time, and whether you carry underinsured motorist coverage.
• You were partly at fault. Comparative fault reduces the number instead of ending the case. A 30 percent share on a $200,000 case is a $140,000 case, not a dismissed one.
• The deadline is close. Value is irrelevant after the statute of limitations runs. Our post on every California injury deadline has the dates in one table.

What your case is worth

Whatever you can prove, minus what comes off. That is the only answer available before the records exist. The way to raise the number is to build the proof: treat consistently, keep every bill, document the income, and let a physician write down what the crash caused before anyone negotiates.

The next step is smaller than it sounds. Gather what you already have, the crash report, the bills, your policy declarations page, and the adjuster’s letters, and have someone read them against the categories California lets you recover. That is what a case review is. Our Los Angeles car accident lawyer page explains what happens after it, and there is no fee unless we recover.