Florida injury law firm.
Today I'm gonna show you a Florida injury and car accident settlement calculator.
I'm gonna show you it works,
I'm gonna show you why this Florida injury settlement calculator is different from other ones online, and I'm gonna show you how Florida law affects the outcome of this calculator differently than if you are injured in another state.
Stay tuned because I'm gonna put in some real-life examples of actual settlements and how this calculator helped calculate them.
a Florida injury law firm.
The first thing to note is this settlement calculator applies if you're hurt and someone else's negligence or carelessness caused your injury.
What types of damages are the most common damages in a personal injury case, thus what types of damages are you gonna be plugging into the calculator that I'm going to show you in a minute or so?
They are out-of-pocket medical bills.
Now in Florida,
if someone's negligence caused your injury, you're entitled to recover the out-of-pocket medical bills.
You're not entitled to recover the full, total medical bill charges as you are in some other states.
You're also entitled to recover lost wages and you're entitled to recover money for pain and suffering.
There's some exceptions regarding the pain and suffering I'll get into a little bit.
Also if you have happen to have health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, and they paid part of your medical bills, you're entitled to recover the amount that they paid.
Pain and suffering is the most difficult amount to come up with when you're using a calculator or when your calculating your case. I, in my calculator, which, again, I strongly, strongly, strongly advise against using a calculator, but in my settlement calculator, I give examples of pain and suffering awards that juries have typically awarded in the past.
I give a settlement range for the pain and suffering, a low end and a high end of that range. If you have the wrong amount for pain and suffering, and by wrong amount
I mean if you don't know what juries typically award for pain and suffering in Florida, your calculation with any settlement calculator, including mine, is going to be totally wrong.
The saying goes garbage in, garbage out. If you're putting in bad data and bad information, you could have the most sophisticated settlement calculator in the world, but it's not going to work.
And I just wanna caution you again, don't use a settlement calculator.
I would suggest speaking with an attorney who really understands how to value cases.
The pain and suffering amounts that I use in my settlement calculator, I got those from past jury verdicts in Florida, they're particular to Florida.
And again,
this calculator that I'm gonna show you is particular to Florida. Again I also came up with these numbers from my actual past settlements as well.
this calculator that I'm gonna show you is particular to Florida. Again I also came up with these numbers from my actual past settlements as well.
I also speak with a lot of attorneys so that I stay up to date on the value of what insurance companies are offering for the pain and suffering component of a case.
There's no guarantee that you're gonna get a penny for pain and suffering, or even a penny in your case.
You need to prove that someone's carelessness caused your injury, and generally speaking, there needs to be insurance available, or you need to be dealing with a business such as Publix, Walmart, a business that has the money to pay your claim.
Insurance companies look at past jury verdicts and past settlements in order to decide how much the pain and suffering component they're going to assign for your claim.
My settlement calculator
or any settlement calculator online, will not work if you have a case, a car accident case, where you need to meet the tort threshold and you have a spinal injury such as a herniated disc or a bulging disc, the reason being in many of those cases, you need to prove that you had a permanent injury and oftentimes juries do not find even a herniated disc to be a permanent injury.
And in Florida, in that situation, you're not entitled to a penny. In many car accident cases in Florida, but not all, if you don't have a permanent injury, the jury is not legally allowed to award you money for pain and suffering.
The tort threshold that I'm referring to, which means that in many car accident cases, but not all, you need to prove you have a permanent injury in order get money for pain and suffering.
It does not apply to slip and falls, it does not apply if you were injured while on a motorcycle, and it doesn't apply to many other accidents.
So now we're here, we're at the Florida Injury and Car Accident Settlement Calculator.
Again, major warning
do not use this for your case. I use it by plugging in numbers because it's easier for me than using, like, Microsoft Excel, for example.
I plug in the medical bills, the lost wages, which I'm gonna get into in a second, and it has past ranges for pain and suffering for me.
But do not use this in your case. There's no substitute for speaking with an attorney who knows personal injury law cold, okay? This is just the starting point that I use for myself and then I make many, many, many adjustments based on many facts of the case, which I'll get into in a moment.
So we're taking a look at the Florida Injury and Car Accident Settlement Calculator.
First step
is to enter your out-of-pocket medical expenses, again, it's out-of-pocket medical expenses, or bills paid by your health insurance company, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other insurance type that paid your medical bills.
You are not in Florida, again, entitled to recover your full medical total bill charges as you are able to in some other states.
You only enter the amount of medical bills that someone's carelessness caused for you to incur.
We'll keep it simple, we're gonna use $5,000 for the amount of your medical bills.
You then enter the amount of money that you were not paid due to the accident or the amount of money that your short-term disability provider or long-term disability provider paid for your lost wages.
If your disability insurance paid money for your lost wages, you're also entitled to recover the percentage that they did not pay.
Everything that I'm gonna say from here on out assumes someone else's carelessness caused your injury.
So we'll assume right now that you lost $1,000 from work. We'll assume that you got better and you don't have a loss of ability to make money in the future.
We'll put zero. We'll assume your future medical expenses are $1,000. So far what we've done is we've added the out-of-pocket medical bills plus lost wages that you're entitled to recover and now we add pain and suffering.
Before I add a number for pain and suffering, just wanna rehash for another time that in Florida in most car accident cases, you need to have a permanent injury in order to get even one penny or more for either past or future pain and suffering.
Many injuries such as just knee pain or back pain or neck pain, without a doctor saying it's a permanent injury, you're not entitled to get money for pain and suffering.
And even if your doctor does say it's a permanent injury, expect the insurance company to argue that it's not, to hire a doctor who will say it's not a permanent injury and they may reduce the value of your pain and suffering and other damages accordingly.
So we'll select an injury.
These are the different injury lists that I have in my calculator. I've assigned a range for pain and suffering, a low end of range and a high end, which you cannot see right now, but as I assign one, it's gonna plug it in.
These are the different injury lists that I have in my calculator. I've assigned a range for pain and suffering, a low end of range and a high end, which you cannot see right now, but as I assign one, it's gonna plug it in.
Again, these are just rough estimates based on past jury verdicts I have looked at.
These assume that the injury healed okay overall and there was no major complications like major infections or multiple surgeries or horrible permanent disability.
We'll just take a simple ankle fracture. And this calculator, as you can see, the economic damages, which are right here, the $7,000, that's your lost wages plus your medical bills.
I put in ankle fracture and this calculator has assigned the low end of a pain and suffering component for an ankle fracture, $10,000, and the high end of $30,000.
Now if you happen to draw a very good insurance company or if you're left with a higher resulting disability, they're more likely to assign this amount, the $30,000, to the higher end of the range for pain and suffering.
If you draw a worse insurance company or you heal very well, they're more likely to assign somewhere around $10,000 or so to the lower end of the pain and suffering component.
Another reason
why you shouldn't use an online settlement calculator is you have to in any case know your percentage of fault.
This is a very difficult to estimate if you're not experienced handling personal injury cases. In a rear-end accident, it's fairly simple to estimate your percentage of fault.
If the other driver admits that he hit you and he doesn't say that you slammed on the brakes or anything like that, we'll put the percentage of fault at zero. So now let's see.
If the percentage of fault was zero and assuming that the other person or company's negligence caused your injury, this is what the minimum estimated settlement, $17,000, and the high end is $37,000. Again, this is just a ballpark that I use just as a starting point.
It could be adjusted majorly either way. Now just to show you how much your percentage of fault affects a case, let's say that you slipped and fell and you were majorly at fault for not seeing what you should have seen before you slipped and fell.
Let's say there's red sauce on a supermarket floor and it was a huge amount of sauce and you should have seen it, and we put your fault at 80% for not seeing it.
You can see how much it affects the value of the case. It dropped the value to $3,400 to $7,400.
In Florida,
the good news is that even if you're 50% or more at fault, you can still recover, which is great for the injured person.
The bad news is that the value of your case is reduced by your percentage of fault, which would be 80%.
So you see how much your percentage of fault affects the value of the case.
And again I said that this calculator applies if someone else was at fault. If someone else was not at fault, this calculator is useless.
If the accident did not cause your injury, it is virtually useless. A situation like that would be if you are in an accident and you don't get treatment for a year after the injury, you're gonna have a hard time proving that the accident was the cause of your injury.
The insurance company will argue that it is not.
helps, a Florida injury law firm.
Have a beautiful day.