If you have a personal injury settlement offer on the table, it’s important to understand what it covers before you agree to accept it. While settling can allow you to recover financial compensation without going to trial, you need to be sure the offer is fair. If it isn’t, it may not fully cover your accident-related losses, leaving you with financial and other consequences that could—and should—be avoided.
So, how do you know if a personal injury settlement offer is fair?
Evaluating a personal injury settlement offer starts with understanding how much you are entitled to recover. If you don’t know what your case is worth, you don’t have any way of knowing whether you should accept any settlement offers that may be on the table.
Generally speaking, accident victims are entitled to compensation for their financial and non-financial losses under Illinois law. As a result, in order to determine what your personal injury case is worth (and how much you should be willing to accept in a personal injury settlement), you will need to answer the following three questions:
First, you need to know how much the accident has cost you already. The costs associated with accident-related injuries generally fall into three broad categories:
While adding up these costs will be relatively straightforward in most cases, it is important to ensure that you do not overlook any costs you are entitled to recover. If you do, you won’t be able to go back and ask for more once you accept a personal injury settlement.
You also need to know how much the accident will cost you in the months or years ahead. Under Illinois law, accident victims are entitled to compensation for their present and future losses. Recoverable future losses generally include:
Calculating the future costs of accident-related injuries is a much more complicated process. Additionally, in many cases, accident victims’ future costs will far exceed their cost to date. With this in mind, it is critically important to ensure that you know how much your accident will cost you in the future before you accept a personal injury settlement.
Along with present and future financial costs, Illinois law entitles accident victims to compensation for their present and future non-financial losses as well. Common non-financial losses include:
Unlike financial costs, you cannot simply “add up” your non-financial losses to determine what constitutes a fair settlement in your case. Instead, determining how much you deserve to recover for these losses will involve working closely with your lawyer to critically assess all of the ways your injuries have impacted (and will continue to impact) your life.
If you have been seriously injured in an accident, we strongly encourage you to contact us before you accept a personal injury settlement.
At Coplan + Crane, we’ve built our reputation on thorough case preparation, exceptional communication, and a commitment to securing the best possible results for our clients. We take the time to understand your situation, evaluate the details of your claim, and negotiate from a position of strength.
Contact the Chicago personal injury lawyers at Coplan + Crane today online or at (312) 982-0588 for a FREE case evaluation. We help clients across Illinois, including Chicago, Oak Park, Rockford, and other areas. We handle premises liability cases on a contingency basis, which means you don’t pay unless we win.
