Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
In this guide
An offer on a Los Angeles premises claim can be judged against the damage categories, the rules that shrink them, and the way a gross recovery becomes a net check. We do not give ranges or averages, because there is no verified source for them and the figures published elsewhere are not evidence of anything. For the liability side, start on our Los Angeles premises liability lawyer page.
Step one: the losses you can claim
California divides compensatory damages, the money meant to make up for your losses, into two categories, and each is proved with different evidence. Everything that follows is a subtraction from what these two produce.
| Category | What it covers | What proves it |
|---|---|---|
| Past medical | Treatment already received | Billing records and amounts paid |
| Future medical | Care you still need | Treating physician opinion, life care plan |
| Lost earnings | Wages missed while treating | Pay records, employer confirmation |
| Lost earning capacity | Work you can no longer do | Vocational and economic analysis |
| Noneconomic | Pain, disfigurement, loss of function | Your testimony and the people who know you |
The four medical and earnings categories are economic damages: losses that can be counted. The last category is noneconomic damages: real losses with no invoice attached. In a serious premises case the noneconomic side is usually the larger number, and it is the one an insurance adjuster attacks hardest, because there is no receipt to argue with.
Step two: how medical bills are counted
This is where most expectations change. In Howell v. Hamilton Meats & Provisions, Inc. (2011) 52 Cal.4th 541, the California Supreme Court addressed an injured plaintiff whose medical expenses are paid through private insurance. Such a plaintiff may recover as economic damages no more than the amounts paid by the plaintiff or the insurer for the services received, or still owing at the time of trial.
The court called the gap between the billed price and the negotiated price the negotiated rate differential, and held that it is not a collateral source benefit, the term for an outside payment that does not reduce what the defendant owes. A $180,000 hospital bill that an insurer settled for $40,000 supports $40,000 in past medical damages, not $180,000. That is why an offer that looks low against your bills can be closer to reasonable than it appears, and why the first thing we do with a file is get the payment ledger rather than the statement.
Step three: your share of the fault
California uses pure comparative fault, so a percentage assigned to you comes off the total with no threshold and no cutoff. Consider an example. Suppose the damages add up to $400,000 and a jury puts 25 percent of the blame on you for taking a stairway you had been told was closed. The award is $300,000. Nothing else changes, and that single percentage moved $100,000.
This is the least expensive lever an insurer has, which is why the insurer's request for a recorded statement arrives early and sounds friendly. Footwear, phone use, whether you saw the sign, whether you had been drinking, how many times you had walked that route before: those questions exist to build a percentage.
Step four: who can actually pay
Under Proposition 51, at Civil Code section 1431.2(a), each defendant's liability for noneconomic damages is several only and not joint. Economic damages remain joint, so one solvent defendant can be made to pay all of them. The pain and suffering award does not work that way: it is divided by percentage, and any share assigned to a defendant with no assets and no coverage is not collected.
Finding every party who controlled the space is therefore a valuation issue as well as a liability issue. The janitorial contractor nobody named is a percentage of your noneconomic damages with nowhere to go.
Step five: the insurance cap
Policy limits are the maximum an insurer will pay under a policy for one occurrence, regardless of what the case is worth. A verdict above the limits does not create money; it creates a collection problem against a defendant who may have none. In premises cases the relevant coverage may be a commercial general liability policy, a landlord policy, a contractor's policy, an umbrella policy above them, or a self-insured retention on a large property owner, meaning the amount the owner pays itself before its insurance starts.
Two things follow. Coverage has to be identified early rather than at mediation, and a case with modest limits and a serious injury is often about finding a second responsible party rather than about arguing value. Where a public entity is the defendant, none of this starts until a written claim is presented within six months, which our guide to suing a city, county, or Metro lays out.
Step six: liens and what you keep
A lien is a right to be repaid out of your settlement. It comes from a health plan that paid your bills, from a provider who treated on a letter of protection, a promise to pay the provider out of the settlement, or from a government program. It is the difference between the gross figure and the number in your account, and California limits it.
Civil Code section 3040 caps a health care service plan's lien. Where you are represented by an attorney, the lien may not exceed the lesser of its statutory maximum or one third of the moneys due under the judgment or settlement; without an attorney, one half. The section also requires the lien to be reduced by the same comparative fault percentage that reduced your recovery, and to be reduced pro rata for your reasonable attorney's fees and costs under the common fund doctrine.
The lienholder shares the cost of the recovery it is being paid out of. Negotiating liens changes the net more reliably than another round of argument about pain and suffering.
One result and its facts
Rather than an average, we can show one file of ours. A slip and fall required a hip replacement, the store denied liability and made no offer at all, and security footage established that staff already knew about the spill. Its outcome is below, with the disclaimer that belongs on it. It is one case with its own facts, its own injuries, and its own coverage.
Slip and fall, hip replacement
The store denied liability. Security footage showed staff knew about the spill.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case depends on its own facts, injuries, and insurance coverage. Amounts shown are gross recoveries before attorney's fees, costs, and medical liens.
What moves the number up or down
| Raises value | Lowers value |
|---|---|
| Objective imaging and a surgical recommendation | A gap between the incident and first treatment |
| Written notice the owner had before your injury | A hazard that appeared moments before |
| Preserved video showing the condition | Footage overwritten before anyone asked |
| Permanent work restrictions documented by a physician | Full return to the same job with no restrictions |
| Multiple insured defendants who controlled the space | One defendant with low policy limits |
When no reliable number exists yet
- Treatment is not finished. Until your prognosis is known, future care is a guess, and a demand built on a guess sets the ceiling too low.
- Coverage is unidentified. Before the policies are known, a valuation is arithmetic without a right-hand side.
- Liability is contested. A case that may end at zero because the owner's knowledge of the hazard cannot be proved is not valued the same way as one that will not.
- Liens are unresolved. A gross figure without lien numbers tells you nothing about the net.
- The deadline controls. Two years under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, six months against a public entity. A perfectly valued case filed late is worth nothing.
What your case is worth
It is worth what the damages prove, minus your fault percentage, within the coverage that exists, minus the liens that attach. Every number you can find online skips at least two of those. What we can tell you early is which of the four is likely to control your file, which is usually enough to know whether an offer in front of you is serious.
The first offer is a negotiating position, not a valuation. If your case involves an assault rather than a condition, read negligent security, and if it involves a pool, our guide to swimming pool and drowning claims covers the proof. For catastrophic injuries where future care drives everything, see our Los Angeles catastrophic injury lawyer page. There is no fee unless we recover.