Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
In this guide
The tool above tests whether an offer is in the right order of magnitude. It does not price your case, and nothing on this page is legal advice or a prediction of outcome.
How the calculator works line by line
The tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is submitted, nothing is stored, and no result is held back for an email address. Every step can be reproduced with a pencil, because a valuation you cannot check is a valuation you should not trust.
| Input | How the tool treats it |
|---|---|
| Medical bills to date | Added to economic damages at the figure you enter |
| Estimated future medical care | Added if you enter it, excluded if you mark it unknown |
| Lost wages to date | Added to economic damages |
| Estimated future lost earnings | Added if entered, excluded if unknown |
| Out-of-pocket costs and property damage | Added to economic damages |
| Severity selector | Sets the multiplier band applied to medical and income losses |
| Your own comparative fault estimate | Reduces the range by that percentage, shown as its own line |
| Known policy limit | Caps the displayed range, with the cap labeled |
Economic damages are the objectively verifiable losses, and the tool adds them. Non-economic damages are the subjective ones, and there the tool applies a multiplier band, a negotiating convention that expresses pain and suffering as a range of multiples of the economic loss. The band it uses and the severity level that produced it are printed next to your result.
That band has no legal standing. No California statute sets it and no jury is ever told it exists. California's jury instruction CACI 3905A gives jurors no fixed standard for measuring physical pain and emotional distress and asks them to use their judgment. The band is shorthand adjusters and attorneys use to talk to each other, useful for testing whether an offer is plausible and useless as a forecast.
What the calculator cannot know
- The available coverage. Until the policies are identified, nobody knows the ceiling, and the ceiling controls the outcome in a large share of Los Angeles claims.
- The fault allocation. You supply a guess. An adjuster supplies a different one, usually before anyone has watched the video, and a jury may supply a third.
- Your prognosis. Future care is often the largest line in a serious case, and no reliable number exists until a treating physician writes one.
- How many defendants there are. An employer, a vehicle owner, or a public entity each adds a policy, and each policy changes the arithmetic.
Why we publish no average settlement
Every calculator page competing for this search publishes an average or a range by injury type, and almost none of them says where the figure came from. A number built from one firm's self-selected files is not a statistic about your case. Published as a promise, it becomes an expectation the firm cannot stand behind.
This page carries no average, no median, and no settlement range by diagnosis. It carries the arithmetic, the statutes that cap it, and the deductions that come out of it. Our individual results are listed with their case types on case results.
Why the insurance caps the number
Vehicle Code 16056 sets California's minimum liability limits at $30,000 for injury to one person, $60,000 where two or more are hurt, and $15,000 for property damage, effective January 1, 2025, rising again on January 1, 2035. A claim worth $200,000 against a driver carrying the minimum is still a $30,000 policy unless another defendant exists.
Two more limits sit behind that one. Vehicle Code 17151 caps an owner who merely lent the car at $15,000 for one person. Underinsured motorist coverage pays the difference rather than the total, because your insurer takes a credit for what the at fault driver's insurer paid, and uninsured motorist claims works through that arithmetic.
Each kind of loss you can claim
| Calculator line | Counted as | Jury instruction |
|---|---|---|
| Medical bills, past and future | Economic, added | CACI 3903A |
| Lost wages, past and future | Economic, added | CACI 3903C |
| Loss of earning capacity | Not in the tool, needs testimony | CACI 3903D |
| Household services you now pay for | Not in the tool, needs proof | CACI 3903E |
| Property damage | Economic, added | CACI 3903J |
| Pain, suffering, emotional distress | Non-economic, banded | CACI 3905A |
| A prior condition made worse | Argued, not calculated | CACI 3927 and 3928 |
Three of those lines are left out of the tool on purpose. Loss of earning capacity and household services require testimony rather than a receipt, and aggravation of a pre-existing condition is a legal argument about causation. CACI 3927 makes a defendant answer for making an existing condition worse, and CACI 3928 says a plaintiff who was unusually susceptible to injury is not penalized for it. Both are worth real money, and neither can be entered in a text box.
Four deductions before your check
| Order | Deduction | What governs it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Comparative fault reduction | Li v. Yellow Cab Co., CACI 405 and 406 |
| 2 | Attorney's fee | The written contingency agreement, Business and Professions Code 6147 |
| 3 | Case costs the attorney advanced | The same agreement, disclosed in writing before representation |
| 4 | Liens and health plan reimbursement | Civil Code 3040 |
Fault comes off first, and it comes off the claim rather than the check. California divides responsibility by percentage, so a 20 percent share reduces the whole recovery by 20 percent before anyone discusses fees. Where more than one defendant is at fault, Civil Code 1431.2 makes each of them severally liable for its own share of the non-economic damages, so a defendant with 10 percent of the fault pays 10 percent of the pain and suffering and no more.
The fee is next, and it is not fixed by law. Business and Professions Code 6147 requires a written contract, signed by both attorney and client with a duplicate given to the client at the time it is made. The contract must state the rate, how disbursements and costs affect both the fee and your recovery, and that the fee is not set by law but is negotiable. An agreement that does not comply is voidable at your option, leaving the attorney entitled only to a reasonable fee. We break the structure down at car accident lawyer fees.
Liens, claims to be repaid out of your settlement, come last and they are negotiable, which is where much of the net recovery is won. Civil Code 3040 caps a health plan's lien at one-third of the money due to you when an attorney represents you and one-half when none does. It requires the lien to be cut by the same comparative fault percentage that cut your recovery. It also subjects the lien to a pro rata reduction for your fees and costs under the common fund doctrine, so the plan bears its share of what it cost to collect the money.
When the number is useful
Use a range to test an early offer for order of magnitude. If your documented bills alone exceed the offer, you have learned something real in ninety seconds. That is the proper use of every calculator on this subject, including ours.
- Do not use it while you are still treating. Half the economic damages have not been incurred yet, so the output is certain to be low.
- Do not use it to decide whether to settle. That decision needs the coverage identified and the prognosis written.
- Do not use it if a public entity is involved. A six month claim deadline under Government Code 911.2 outranks any number on this page.
- Do not use it if you were driving your own uninsured car. Civil Code 3333.4 removes non-economic damages entirely, so the banded half of the output does not exist.
- Do not treat the policy limit field as optimistic. If you know the limit, it is usually the answer rather than a cap on a bigger answer.
What to do with the number
Write it down, then find the two facts the tool could not supply. Ask the at fault driver's insurer in writing for the policy limits, and ask your own insurer what uninsured and underinsured limits you carry. Those two answers move a range more than any input on the form above.
Then finish treating before anyone puts a number in front of an adjuster, which is most of what maximizing a car accident settlement involves. Head injuries change the arithmetic more than any other category, and Los Angeles brain injury covers why. If the crash happened on a freeway with several vehicles involved, the fault split is its own problem, covered on freeway accidents. The deadlines behind all of it are on Los Angeles car accident lawyer.