How Long Does It Take a Personal Injury Case to Settle?

Steven A. Bagen | December 9, 2024 | Personal Injury

If you’ve suffered an injury due to someone else’s negligence, you might wonder how long it takes for a personal injury case to settle. The out-of-pocket costs associated with vehicle repairs and medical bills can be overwhelming while waiting to recover compensation, and you need answers.

Several factors determine the time to receive a personal injury case settlement. Consult a Daytona personal injury attorney to discuss the specifics of your case. They can better assess your timeline after learning about your accident and injuries.

 

Factors That Influence a Personal Injury Case Timeline

There are many factors to consider when processing a personal injury claim. Common factors influencing a personal injury case timeline involve personal injury case type, severity of injuries, length of medical treatment, establishing liability, and how the insurance company handles your claim.

The Type of Personal Injury Case 

The type of personal injury case and the circumstances of your case significantly impact the settlement time. Some cases involve more complex investigations or have considerable amounts of evidence to process and analyze. Standard personal injury cases include:

• Car accidents
• Large truck accidents
• Motorcycle accidents
• Wrongful death
• Slip and falls (premises liability) 
• Bicycle accidents
• Pedestrian accidents
• Workplace accidents
• Rideshare accidents

Toxic torts are another personal injury case involving dangerous or deadly exposure to toxic substances or chemicals. These exposures frequently occur in the home or workplace through consumer and household products or dangerous medication.

Toxic torts also include injury from exposure to environmental toxins from the negligent disposal of hazardous waste. If you’ve been exposed to toxic chemicals resulting in injuries, you should contact a personal injury lawyer immediately.

The Severity of Your Injuries

The severity of your injuries plays a significant role in how long it takes to settle your personal injury case. Accident injury victims with severe injuries have longer recovery timelines and more extensive medical, rehabilitation, and disability costs. You don’t want to settle your claim until you are done being treated.

The Length of Your Medical Treatment

The severity of your injuries is directly related to the length of your medical treatment. Naturally, the more severe your injuries, the more extensive your medical treatment, rehabilitation, and recovery time will be. It also ensures substantial healthcare expenses that are recoverable economic damages in your claim.

The Establishment of Liability

Establishing liability can be a complex process that involves working with experts like accident reconstruction specialists. Liability can be unclear in some accidents and disputed in others. In cases involving multiple liable parties, it’s common for insurers to deny liability, ascribing blame to other liable insurance companies.

The Insurer’s Conduct in Handling Your Claim

When processing your claim, the liable insurance company’s conduct is another variable affecting your personal injury case settlement time. Insurance claim adjusters are hired to minimize how much money the insurance company pays out. That means they have many plays in their book that they may use to delay your claim long enough that you accept their first low-bid offer.

Many unrepresented injury victims are victimized a second time by these deplorable tactics. Insurers understand that everyday citizens are generally not skilled negotiators, meaning most won’t even attempt to counteroffer for a fairer amount.

Represented victims may still jump through some insurance hoops. However, they’ll have the peace of mind of a legal professional who confidently jumps over these hurdles every day doing it for them.

How Much Can I Get in a Personal Injury Case?

How much you can get in a personal injury case depends on many things, including state jurisdiction. Many states impose damage caps on non-economic damages or pain and suffering in personal injury cases.

Additional factors influencing your settlement amount overlap some of those affecting the timeline to settle:

• The type of accident
• The severity of your injuries
• The insurance policy amounts of liable parties
• The length of your recovery time

What is the Process of Filing a Personal Injury Claim?

Filing a personal injury claim involves communicating and negotiating with liable insurance companies for your damages. It is the first step in recovering financial compensation in personal injury cases.

If insurers are unwilling to settle or deny your claim, the following process will involve filing a personal injury lawsuit. However, lawyers and liable insurance companies handle most personal injury cases outside the courtroom to avoid litigation time and costs.

Hire an Experienced Personal Injury Lawyer

The sooner you hire legal counsel, the better. Finding a personal injury lawyer with experience with claims like yours is important. In the same way, you wouldn’t want a mechanic who has never worked on your vehicle type to make repairs on your car—you don’t want an attorney who lacks experience with cases like yours to represent you.

Undergo Necessary Medical Treatment and Rehabilitation

Undergoing all necessary medical and rehabilitation treatment is pertinent before your personal injury lawyer can send a demand letter for damages. Due to the statute of limitations on personal injury cases, it’s vital that accident victims make recovery their top priority.

After retaining an experienced personal injury lawyer, it’s important that you undergo all medical and rehab treatments, track your financial losses, and document your pain and suffering.

Track Your Financial Losses

Tracking and organizing all financial losses incurred in your personal injury case is critical to recovering those damages. It’s recommended to keep copies of everything you obtain before providing them to your lawyer. Financial losses common to personal injury cases are as follows:

• Healthcare Costs: All medical, rehabilitation, and disability costs, including future healthcare expenses—emergency care, surgeries, medical evaluations, physical therapy, prescriptions, medical devices, and in-home and transportation mobility modifications. 
• Vehicle-Related Expenses: Vehicle repairs or auto replacement, wheelchair-accessible vehicles, rental car requirements while your vehicle is repaired, and other temporary transportation services, such as taxis and rideshares like Uber and Lyft.
• Property Damages: Personal property damaged or destroyed in the accident, such as cell phones, car seats, clothing, glasses, commercial or residential buildings, fences, mailboxes, or anything else lost to the accident. 
• Lost Income: All income losses, including earnings or salary, tips and commissions, bonuses, healthcare benefits, retirement, projected promotions, and diminished earning capacity or future earnings.

Financial losses are easily tracked and verifiable with billing statements, invoices, receipts, bank statements, and other documents demonstrating monetary loss or debt. To prove income losses, provide paystubs, tax returns, or an employer lost income statement clarifying income losses.

Document Your Pain and Suffering

Unlike financial losses, pain and suffering are intangible losses that can be more challenging to prove the need to be compensated for. The most effective way for accident victims to document their pain and suffering is with an injury journal. Things to document in your injury journal include:

• The severity of your pain on a scale of 1-10
• Type of pain you’re experiencing (dull, achy, sharp, radiating)
• The location and duration of your pain
• Activities that worsen pain
• Inability to perform daily tasks or activities you previously enjoyed
• Pain management (prescriptions, massage, psychotherapy)
• The effects of your pain management and other medical treatments
• Sleep disturbances (insomnia, discomfort, nightmares)
• Emotional distress
• Post-traumatic stress syndrome symptoms (PTSD)

You can record a video journal, handwrite it, or type it on your computer. The most important thing about a post-accident injury journal is that the entries are dated, detailed, and consistent. Random entries without concise details will not bode well in awarding your pain and suffering damages.

How Will a Personal Injury Lawyer Help Settle My Personal Injury Case?

An experienced personal injury attorney offers many services that make their overall service invaluable to injury victims. One that provides peace of mind is their offer of contingency arrangements.

Contingency arrangements allow anyone to afford an attorney because they require no money upfront. Furthermore, they offer protection for the accident victim. If your lawyer cannot secure compensation for your injuries, you don’t owe them a dime. There is zero risk in retaining an experienced attorney to handle the legal aspects of your claim.

Collect and Preserve Evidence

Gathering and preserving evidence before it is lost is critical. The type of evidence gathered—largely depends on your accident type. Standard evidence in personal injury cases involves:

• Police and accident reports
• Video footage from bystander’s cellphones
• Video from traffic cameras and dashcams
• Photos of the accident scene
• Pictures demonstrating the severity of your injuries
• Driver cell phone records
• Driver GPS information at the time of the accident
• Commercial truck black boxes and other electronic logging devices (ELDs)
• Debris from your car, truck, or motorcycle accident

Identifying and interviewing witnesses is another critical part of gathering and preserving evidence. Collecting witness statements early is important, as you want to get them while the accident details are fresh.

Accident Reconstruction

Accident reconstruction can be valuable in proving negligence in your personal injury case. Using scientific methods, accident reconstruction specialists recreate your accident with computer simulations, 3D models, and diagrams to demonstrate liability. Their expert testimony helps secure maximum compensation for personal injury victims.

Offer a Thorough Valuation of Your Personal Injury Claim

Personal injury lawyers will examine every area where you’ve experienced loss after your accident. It should not fall on your shoulders to pay for damages when the accident wasn’t your fault. They will calculate economic damages and non-economic damages like your pain and suffering. These pain and damages include:

• Physical and chronic pain
• Permanent impairments (scarring, disfigurement, amputation)
• Traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries
• Vision and hearing losses
• Anger and frustration following an accident
• Fear—including the development of phobias relating to your accident type
• Worsening of previous conditions or shortened life expectancy  
• Loss of society and companionship
• Limitations or restrictions on daily activities
• Changes in sleeping patterns and eating habits

The loss of consortium is a non-economic damage for spouses who become disabled and surviving spouses who lose their loved one to wrongful death in a personal injury accident. Loss of consortium covers a range of pain and suffering damages, such as the loss of love, affection, physical intimacy, support, guidance, and companionship. Additional wrongful death damages include:

• The decedent’s pain and suffering
• The decedent’s diminished quality of life before their death
• Final arrangement costs (funeral, memorial services, burial, cremation)
• The decedent’s final medical expenses from the date of the accident until their passing
• Loss of household services
• Loss of financial support (salary, benefits, pension, future earnings)
• Loss of parental guidance
• Loss of inheritance 

Surviving family members of wrongful death may find documenting their damages in a journal helpful for tracking them. Additionally, if your loved one kept an injury journal after their accident, that can help your personal injury attorney establish those damages to ensure fair compensation.

Negotiate With Liable Parties

After thoroughly evaluating all your economic and non-economic damages following an accident, your attorney will send a demand letter to all liable parties. Most of the time that means dealing with insurance companies. After receiving the demand letter, negotiations will begin.

Most insurers are unwilling to pay your lawyer’s initial demands. However, that is a known part of the back-and-forth process, and your attorney will not be dissuaded from confidently demanding a fair settlement.

Personal injury cases can involve multiple rounds of negotiations before reaching an agreed settlement. Any offers will be discussed with you, and you will have the authority to accept or reject them. Your lawyer will advise you about your best options.

Represent You in Court

When personal injury lawyers and insurance companies cannot agree, the next step is filing a lawsuit. Your attorney will file the paperwork and enter the discovery phase with the defense prosecution.

They will exchange depositions and other pertinent information during the discovery process to prepare them for trial. Your lawyer will prepare expert witnesses and cross-examine defense witnesses. A judge and jury will determine if you will be awarded damages.

A Personal Injury Attorney Is Standing By

Schedule a free consultation with a local personal injury lawyer to discuss your legal rights to compensation.