Insurance adjusters estimate the value of your claim within days of receiving it, using variables you can see for yourself. This tool applies the same ones — documented losses, injury severity, your share of fault, and available coverage — and shows the reasoning behind every adjustment. Six questions, about two minutes.
Every number above comes from four inputs an adjuster also uses. None of it is a secret formula, and understanding it is what stops a lowball offer from sounding reasonable.
Medical bills paid to date, projected future treatment, lost income, and reduced earning capacity are the documented, verifiable part of a claim. They are the number an insurer cannot argue away, and they are why treatment gaps matter so much — an undocumented injury is, to an adjuster, an injury that did not happen. Keep every statement, bill, and explanation of benefits from the date of the collision forward.
Pain, loss of enjoyment, disruption to daily life and permanent limitation are real losses with no receipt attached. California juries award them based on evidence, not on a fixed multiplier of the medical bills. The widely repeated “three times specials” rule is not law and does not appear in any California statute or jury instruction. What moves this number is documentation: treatment history, imaging, prognosis, and a clear record of how the injury changed what a person can do.
California applies pure comparative fault. If you are found 30 percent responsible, your recovery is reduced by 30 percent — and you still recover. There is no cutoff. This is a genuine difference from most states, where crossing 50 or 51 percent responsibility ends the claim entirely, and it is one of the most frequently misstated points about California injury law. An insurer assigning you fault is making an argument, not stating a finding.
A claim worth more than the available insurance is only collectible up to that coverage, unless the at-fault party has assets worth pursuing or a second policy applies. California raised its minimum auto liability limits to 30/60/15 on January 1, 2025 — still low against a serious injury. This is why your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage under Cal. Ins. Code section 11580.2 is often the coverage that actually makes a serious claim whole, and why the first thing worth checking after a crash is your own declarations page.
Four things move a real settlement that no tool can model. Liability evidence — whether fault is clear, disputed, or shared — changes an insurer's risk assessment more than any single input. The identity of the carrier matters, because reserve practices and litigation appetite differ. Venue matters, since Santa Clara County juries behave differently from other California counties. And whether a lawsuit has been filed changes the negotiating posture entirely.
A number produced before treatment is complete is a guess in every case, including this one. The value of running the numbers early is not the number — it is knowing which of the four variables is doing the most damage to your claim, and what evidence would move it.
Insurers make early offers for a reason. In the first weeks after a collision the medical picture is incomplete, the full course of treatment is unknown, and any permanent limitation has not yet declared itself. An offer made in that window is priced against the injury as it appears on paper that day — not against the injury as it turns out to be. Soft-tissue damage and head injuries in particular are frequently underdocumented in the first fortnight, because the symptoms surface after the emergency-department visit is already closed.
Accepting an early settlement closes the claim permanently. There is no mechanism to reopen it if surgery becomes necessary six months later. That is the single most expensive decision available to an unrepresented claimant, and it is made most often by people who never saw a range at all and had nothing to measure the offer against.
The practical use of a calculator is not the figure it produces. It is seeing which of the four variables is holding your number down, and what evidence would move it — a specialist referral that documents an ongoing limitation, a wage record that captures the real income loss, a witness statement that shifts the fault split, or a second policy nobody has looked for yet.
None of this matters if the claim expires. The general California deadline to file a personal injury lawsuit is two years from the date of injury under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. section 335.1. A claim against a city, county, or state entity — including a dangerous road condition or a collision with a government vehicle — requires an administrative claim within six months under Cal. Gov. Code section 911.2. Medical malpractice runs on its own clock under section 340.5. Missing a deadline usually ends the claim permanently regardless of its value.
The multiplier rules circulating online — medical bills times two, times three — are not how adjusters or attorneys actually evaluate claims. They persist because they are simple, and they mislead in both directions, producing expectations that are far too high on modest claims and far too low on serious ones.
What actually drives value: the severity and permanence of the injury, whether the diagnosis rests on objective findings, the length and consistency of treatment, whether surgery occurred, documented wage loss and diminished earning capacity, the credibility of the medical record, comparative fault under California's pure comparative negligence rule, and the available insurance limits.
That last factor is decisive and routinely overlooked. A claim with two hundred thousand dollars of documented damages against a driver carrying California's thirty-thousand-dollar minimum is a thirty-thousand-dollar claim, unless underinsured motorist coverage exists on your own policy under Cal. Ins. Code § 11580.2. No calculation of damages changes what a policy will pay.
Timing matters as much as arithmetic. A claim cannot be meaningfully valued before a treating physician has addressed two questions: whether you have reached maximum medical improvement, and whether further treatment is recommended. Until both answers exist in the record, any number is an estimate built on incomplete information — including a number offered by an insurer.
Ranges are useful for orientation. They are not case evaluations, and nothing on this page is one.
Liens are the other reason a headline number and a net number diverge. If your health plan paid for accident-related treatment it will generally assert a right of reimbursement against your recovery. Hospital liens, provider balances on lien-based treatment, and Medi-Cal or Medicare interests all come out of your side rather than the insurer's. Those amounts are frequently negotiable, and the negotiation happens at the end of a case, which means the figure you actually keep is determined after the settlement number is agreed.
Non-economic damages have no receipt attached, which is precisely why they are valued thinly in early offers. California juries award them based on evidence rather than formula, and the evidence is the treating record, the documented functional limitations, and the specific activities a person can no longer do. A claim where those are documented contemporaneously is valued very differently from an identical injury where they are described from memory eighteen months later.
One further variable is who is evaluating the claim. Adjusters carry settlement authority up to a defined dollar figure, and above it a supervisor or committee must approve. Negotiations that move steadily and then stop at a particular number usually mean that ceiling has been reached, and moving past it requires new documentation rather than further argument. This is why a claim presented once, complete, with every category of loss substantiated, tends to resolve differently from one presented in pieces as records trickle in.
No cost, no obligation. Choose how you'd like to start.
✆ Call (408) 677-2785 ✉ Submit My Case Online