What this guide is best for
Direct answer: A settlement figure is assembled from documented line items, and this page names the line items and the document behind each one. It does not give you a number, and it will not estimate yours.
Best used when: Someone has quoted you a settlement range and you want to know what a range like that would have to be built from before it could mean anything.
Quick answer
A settlement figure is not a value assigned to an injury. It is a negotiated total, and the parties argue it forward from documents: bills, records, pay records, and the treating history. Every part of it that can be checked is checked against a piece of paper.
This site publishes no average settlement figure and no settlement estimate. It has no source it can name for either, and a figure without a source is worse than no figure, because someone will rely on it.
Timing: why the number cannot exist yet
Early in a claim the components are still open. Treatment has not finished, so the medical column is not final; time away from work is still accruing; the long-term picture is a prediction rather than a record.
That is why an early demand for a number is answered with a range or with silence. It is also why the urgent work in the first weeks is documentary rather than numerical: what is captured now is what the figure can later be built from.
Deadlines to bring a claim vary by state and by claim type. That question is separate from the value question and should go to qualified counsel for your own state.
The line items, and the document behind each
| Line item | What it is argued from | Where the dispute usually sits |
|---|---|---|
| Medical charges | Itemised provider bills and the insurer's explanation of benefits | Whether the billed amount or the amount actually accepted is the right number |
| Future care | A treating or retained physician's written opinion | Whether the projected care is attributable to this incident |
| Lost earnings | Pay records, tax records, employer confirmation of time missed | Whether the absence is documented and connected to the injury |
| Reduced earning capacity | Occupational and earnings evidence | Whether any long-term change is established rather than assumed |
| Non-economic component | Treatment records, the treating history, the claimant's own account | Availability and measurement are set by state law and differ by state |
| Fault allocation | The incident record, photographs, witnesses, any report | How a claimant's own share of fault is treated is a state-law question |
The last two rows carry a warning. Whether a non-economic component is available, how it is measured, whether any statutory limit applies, and how a claimant's own share of fault affects the total are all set by state law and are not the same from one state to the next. Do not carry a rule you read about one state into another. Ask qualified counsel what the rule is where the claim arises.
Where the medical column comes from, and why it is contested
The medical line is usually stated at billed charges, and billed charges are list prices. Published Medicare figures show how wide that gap runs: for a lumbar spine MRI without contrast, the average submitted charge was $1,235.09 and the average Medicare allowed amount was $144.78.
Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners — by Geography and Service, calendar year 2024 claims, code 72148, national office setting.
Those are Medicare's figures for Medicare's population, not a quote for your care. They are here for one reason: the distance between what is billed and what is accepted is the argument that runs underneath the medical column of every injury negotiation. The wider table of these figures is in the medical bills behind a settlement.
Collect the itemised bill, the explanation of benefits, and your own payment record from every provider, and photograph them as they arrive. Keep a dated treatment timeline, because gaps in it get argued about later.
Questions to ask about any figure you are given
- Which of these line items is this figure built from, and which are still open?
- What document supports each line, and can I see it?
- Is the medical line stated at billed charges, at accepted amounts, or at something else?
- Which state's law governs, and what does that change about the last two rows?
- What comes off the top — fee, expenses, liens — before anything reaches me?
On that last question, the deductions are set out in what a personal injury case costs you.
Cautions, including one about arithmetic
A convention circulates in which the non-economic component is produced by multiplying medical charges by a factor. This site cannot trace that convention to any published authority and does not use it. Be careful with any figure that arrives as the output of a formula nobody will show you.
Do not read anyone's published average as a prediction about your claim. Averages describe the cases that produced them, and those cases are not yours.
Slow down before agreeing to any allocation of a settlement between categories. The tax treatment of a settlement is not uniform across categories: the IRS states that for personal physical injuries or physical sickness, where no itemised deduction for related medical expenses was taken in prior years, "the full amount is non-taxable" (Publication 4345, rev. 9-2023), and separately that any portion for medical expenses deducted in a prior year must be included in income to the extent the deduction gave a tax benefit.
What to do next
Build the document set before you ask for a number: itemised bills, explanations of benefits, pay records, and a dated treatment timeline. Then ask which line items are closed and which are still open, and hold the answer against this list.
Educational only. Not legal advice. No endorsements or rankings. Nothing here estimates or predicts any outcome.