How to Increase Your Personal Injury Settlement Value: 10 Tips

Jeff Marion | February 9, 2024 | Personal Injury

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As a personal injury attorney, probably the No. 1 question I get asked on a regular basis is “How much is my case worth?” It’s not a straightforward question to answer. It depends on a whole lot of factors. And most of all, it’s not set in stone—there are things you can do to influence the value of your personal injury case (positively or negatively) in the eyes of the insurance company.

In this blog post, I’m going to share some actionable tips you can keep in mind that can help you get the best possible settlement from your personal injury lawsuit.

But I’ll spoil the No. 1 tip right up front: talk to an experienced personal injury attorney before you start going toe-to-toe with the insurance company.

Most injury victims don’t really understand what their case is worth and need help backing up a serious demand letter with the right evidence and arguments. Your personal injury lawyer can help you understand what your case is worth and fight for what’s fair—or, if it’s a small case, give you the information and advice you need to negotiate a settlement on your own.

With that out of the way, let’s move on.

A Quick Preamble: The Concept of a “Fair Settlement”

The goal of any personal injury claim is to provide an injured person with “fair compensation.” But what does that really mean?

Imagine a set of scales. On one side, you pile up everything that’s been unfairly taken from you due to someone else’s negligence—not just medical bills and lost wages, but also less tangible things like physical pain, emotional trauma, or loss of your ability to enjoy physical activities and hobbies. On the other side, you place whatever amount of money you believe balances the scale.

The problem is that your idea of what’s fair is probably going to be very different than what the insurance company had in mind. You’ll have to negotiate and convince the insurance company that the evidence is on your side (and that a hypothetical jury is likely to agree).

When I talk about “how to increase settlement value,” this is the core idea. It’s not about taking the insurance company to the cleaners no matter the facts. It’s about proving that the amount of money you’re asking for is what you truly deserve, in order to balance the scale.

So how do you do that? Here are 10 tips.

1. Seek Medical Attention Right Away

Personal injury cases depend on medical records. You need them to prove to the insurance company that your injuries are real, that they were caused by the accident, that your medical treatment was necessary, that your future medical care projections are realistic.

The longer you wait to see a doctor after you’re injured, the harder this will be for you. If you wait three months to see a doctor (or even just a couple of weeks), it’s much harder for that doctor to say for certain that your injuries were caused by the crash. And the insurance company will absolutely argue that, if you waited so long to see a doctor, your injuries must not have been that bad anyway.

Don’t try to tough it out. It can only hurt you.

2. Always Follow Your Doctor’s Advice

If your doctor tells you to get a test or see another specialist, go get that test and go see that specialist. If your doctor gives you a therapy plan, follow it to the letter. If your doctor gives you a set of activity restrictions, don’t cheat.

I know that following doctor’s orders can be incredibly frustrating. People who are stressed, overwhelmed, and in pain aren’t always excited about more appointments or following through with therapy. And people who are making good progress in their recovery often feel restricted by rules about what they aren’t allowed to do.

But know this: the insurance company will be watching. They may even hire a private investigator. They’ll definitely watch what you post on social media and review all your medical records. If you go against your doctor’s orders, they’ll probably find out. And they will use that information to question not only the necessity of your medical treatment, but your personal credibility, too.

On the other hand, carefully following your doctor’s orders strengthens your damage claim—not to mention enhances your credibility in front of a potential jury.

3. Contact a Personal Injury Attorney Right Away

This is a big one, for a couple of reasons.

One, as soon as you get hurt, the insurance company will start looking for ways to minimize or deny what you’ve gone through. They have a financial incentive to pay you as little as possible. They won’t give you the benefit of the doubt, and they’ll look for any evidence they can to justify making a lower settlement offer (or none at all).

Quite often, they’ll ask you to give a recorded statement. Don’t do it, at least not without consulting your attorney. That statement won’t help you. If you forget anything, or make any innocent mistakes, or say anything that later turns out to be untrue, it will damage your credibility. A lawyer can protect you from these tactics.

Two, after a personal injury, evidence tends to disappear pretty quickly. Accident scene debris gets cleaned up. Security camera footage gets deleted. Sidewalk ice melts. When you aren’t working with an experienced attorney, you might not realize some of this evidence even exists. If you wait too long to hire one, that evidence could already be lost by the time your lawyer gets involved.

4. Preserve the Evidence

Speaking of evidence.

This is especially relevant in a product liability case, although it applies to any kind of personal injury.

If you’re hurt in a car crash, be sure to take lots of pictures of the accident scene, vehicle damage, and your injuries. If you’re hurt by a defective product, don’t throw it away or try to fix it. If your clothes have been damaged in the accident, keep those too.

Again, once that evidence is gone, it’s gone. At best, this means you won’t be able to use it to support your case. At worst, it will reflect very badly on you. If you throw away a defective product that injured you before an expert (and the defense) can analyze it, the judge may even instruct the jury to consider it as evidence against your case.

5. Document the Personal Impact of Your Injuries

You can’t calculate the value of a personal injury case with documented medical expenses, pay stubs, and other purely financial evidence alone. Especially when serious injuries are involved, non-economic damages like pain and suffering will be a big part of the equation.

Medical records might tell a jury that you had a brain injury or you needed a spinal fusion. But they aren’t going to say anything about how you felt about not being able to go hiking and camping with your family, or not being able to attend your daughter’s recital because you can’t sit for more than 20 minutes without pain. Facts like these aren’t trivial—they help juries empathize with personal injury victims and potentially increase the settlement value.

Your personal injury lawyer will likely interview and gather statements from family members, friends, and co-workers to demonstrate the personal, emotional, and psychological consequences of your injuries. You might also consider starting a daily journal to record your experiences as you work your way through recovery.

6. Make Sure You Identify All the Liable Parties

One unfortunate truth about personal injury cases is that “fair compensation” for what’s been taken and “how much you can actually collect” are often two very different things.

Imagine a car accident case involving serious injuries. You might calculate that you deserve $1 million in past and future damages. The other party’s insurance company might even agree with you that you’ve suffered $1 million in damages. But if the at-fault driver was only carrying $25,000 in insurance coverage, that’s all the insurance company must pay. And if the at-fault driver doesn’t have any other assets to pay you, that might be all you can get out of them.

But what if the driver wasn’t the only negligent party in this scenario? For example, if they were on the job at the time of the crash, their employer might also be liable. Or if they were driving drunk, a bar that knowingly overserved them might also be liable. Or if they couldn’t avoid the crash due to a design defect in the car, you might have a case against a manufacturer.

Identifying all liable parties is critical because it means a bigger “pot” of insurance coverage (or assets) is available to pay for your damages. And due to the legal concept of joint and several liability, all negligent parties in a personal injury lawsuit are jointly responsible to pay out whatever damages are awarded. So, if an at-fault driver has a $25,000 policy and a product manufacturer has $1 million in coverage to pay you, the product manufacturer may still be required to pay out the full policy limits even if they’re only 5% responsible for the crash.

Most people also have some amount of uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage in their own auto insurance policy. This kicks in to provide additional compensation if you’ve exhausted all other applicable insurance coverage from the at-fault parties and still have excess damages.

7. Don’t Give a Recorded Statement to the Insurance Company

I touched on this a bit before, but it’s worth a longer discussion.

Almost certainly, the insurance adjuster is going to ask you if you’d consent to providing a recorded statement. Unless your attorney has specifically given you advice and permission, you should always say no to this request.

Injury victims often think that they have nothing to hide, and that if they agree to a recorded statement, the insurance company will look on it favorably as a sign of honesty and good faith. Sadly, that’s just now how it works.

The purpose of the recorded statement is to trap you into forgetting something, or exaggerating something, or making unintentionally confusing or contradictory statements. If you slip up, even innocently, your words can and will be used against you. And even if you state everything perfectly, it doesn’t really help you.

8. Follow Your Attorney’s Advice

This might seem like an obvious recommendation, particularly coming from a personal injury lawyer. And it is. But you’d also be surprised at just how often clients go through the trouble of meeting with an attorney, hiring them … and then completely ignoring most of what they have to say.

Chances are you’ve never been involved in a personal injury case before. But your attorney handles them all the time. Not only do they know the law as it relates to your specific type of case, but they’re likely very familiar with the judge assigned to your case, the insurance company you’re up against, and even the specific defense attorney.

But more than that: each and every lawyer owes a duty of loyalty and fidelity to their clients. In other words: your personal injury lawyer is legally obligated to put your needs first and act in your best interest, rather than their own. In fact, if your attorney doesn’t fulfill this obligation and it ends up costing you, you can sue your own attorney for damages.

One of the most common reasons people ignore their attorney’s advice is that they don’t understand the consequences. You might think something isn’t that big of a deal. But little mistakes (especially early in a case) can often have disastrous consequences.

If your attorney gives you advice, take it seriously. And if you don’t understand why your attorney is asking you to do something, ask them about it! Don’t just assume something is unimportant—get clarification. Your attorney isn’t there to give you orders; they’re there to help you fully understand your situation and make wise decisions.

9. Work With Experts to Calculate Future Damages

In a personal injury case, you’re allowed to demand compensation for any future economic and non-economic damages you’re expected to suffer as a direct result of the incident.

As you might imagine, future damages are not at all easy to estimate or prove, since no one can perfectly predict the future. And there may be lots of considerations you haven’t considered.

Consider, for example:

Future lost wages. If your injuries are long-term or permanent, this can be much more complex than just multiplying your average salary by the number of years you’ll be out of work. What would your career trajectory have looked like? Will you miss out on promotions or raises you would have otherwise received?
Future medical care. Are you going to need a lifetime of physical therapy or medication to control pain? Will you need a joint replacement or follow-up revision surgery in 10 or 15 years? Will you be more likely to require assisted living or nursing care sooner than you might have otherwise?
Future pain and suffering. How long are you expected to live with pain or disability? What kind of quality of life will you be able to achieve?
Other crash-related expenses. How long are you going to need a housekeeper or nanny handle responsibilities you can no longer perform yourself? What about the cost of modifying future homes or vehicles to accommodate a disability?

The absolute last thing you want to do is underestimate the future cost of your personal injury. Once you settle, there’s no turning back. You must be sure that your settlement can fully provide for your future needs.

But if you’re like most people, you can’t really make these complex calculations on your own. At my personal injury law firm, our team works with doctors, life care planners, therapists, and other experts who use their professional expertise to estimate future damages accurately and support them with solid evidence.

10. Be Patient and Don’t Take the Lowball

The insurance company is a business. At the end of the day, they want to make your case go away as cheaply as possible.

If they can’t outright deny your insurance claim (because liability is super clear and your injuries were clearly caused by the crash), their next play is to get you to settle your claim for as little as they can. Usually for a whole lot less than what it’s truly worth.

This tactic often works for several reasons. Maybe the crash victim didn’t take the time to really calculate the full future costs. Maybe they’re just desperate for cash and willing to take whatever’s on the table. But as I said above, the last thing you want to do is settle for less than you really need.

If you’re in a financial pinch (and most crash victims are), your personal injury lawyer can help you put your medical bills on hold and get the support you need until the settlement check is in your hands.

Injured? Contact Jeff Marion Today

I’ve been helping people injured in car crashes and other personal injury accidents for almost 30 years. I pride myself on providing the highest quality service and helping my clients make the best physical, emotional, and financial recovery possible.

If you need to speak with an attorney in the Buffalo, NY area, call (716)-589-6655 or use our online contact form to request a free case evaluation today.

ATTORNEY ADVERTISING: this blog may be considered attorney advertising under the rules of certain jurisdictions. No one should rely in any manner on the information presented as legal advice. Parties seeking advice should consult with legal counsel familiar with their particular circumstances.

How to Increase Your Personal Injury Settlement Value: Top 10 Tips