Let’s say you were hurt in an accident and you’ve finally gotten the personal injury settlement offer from the insurance company. You’ve spent weeks, maybe even months, dealing with paperwork and medical appointments and meetings, and you finally have a number on the table to think about.
Now what?
A settlement offer is a critical step in any claim, but it raises a lot of questions. Is the offer fair? Should you take it? Should you settle, or go to trial for your personal injury case?
If you do take the offer, will you regret it? If you go to trial, will you have to sit through months or even years of the case dragging on, for an uncertain outcome?
That’s a question that everyone has to answer for themselves, and no one can make the choice for you. At Georgia Legal Counsel, we believe you, the injured person, are the only one who gets to choose how to move forward. Not your lawyer, or the insurance company, or an article online.
However, we also believe that you have the right to choose whether to go to trial or settle with a well-rounded understanding of what both options entail. Below, we break down what case evaluations look like, so you can decide how to move forward.
Why Some Firms Push Quick Settlements Even Though It Hurts Victims
Let’s be perfectly frank for a moment. Not every law firm actually has its clients’ best interests at heart.
There are many personal injury law firms that are built on volume: getting as many cases closed as quickly as possible. This gives the firm more predictable revenue, but often at the expense of the clients. These firms may push clients to settle even when the offer isn’t very good, because it is a guaranteed payout for substantially less work and risk.
Other firms are focused on protecting themselves and their clients from risk. From that perspective, they encourage clients to settle to ensure they receive a payout in a timely fashion, without the uncertainty of a trial, even if going to trial may have led to a better bottom line down the road.
To be clear, these approaches don’t mean that settling is the wrong decision by any means. For many accident victims, settling is the right call. However, it does mean that you should always take time to think things through, even if your attorney is recommending that you settle. To make the right decision for yourself, it helps to know what your attorney is actually doing when they evaluate your case.
How Attorneys Evaluate a Case Behind the Scenes
When your attorney is reviewing a settlement offer to determine if it’s worth going to trial, they are evaluating several factors, including:
Venue
The venue is the court where your case would go to trial, and it matters more than you might realize. Every county in Georgia has its own court system, and the outcome of a case can vary substantially depending on where it’s heard. For example, some courts may have busier calendars, forcing your case to move more slowly. Others may have a history of personal injury claims receiving higher (or lower) verdicts than the state average. Your lawyer should be able to explain if there are trends in the particular venue where your case would be heard that could impact the outcome.
Damages
The primary reason to go to trial in most personal injury claims is because you believe you would receive a greater payout in court-ordered damages than were included in the settlement offer.
Damages may be:
- Economic: These are the calculable cost of your injury, like past and future medical expenses related to the accident, lost wages, and other monetary impacts.
- Non-economic: These compensate you for the other harms you experience from the accident, such as pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment, or emotional distress.
If you have good documentation regarding the impact of the accident, you have a better claim. Good documentation includes detailed medical records, treatment histories, and evidence that your injury was caused by the accident.
Your lawyer can use this information both while negotiating a settlement and while arguing your case in court. If you don’t have strong documentation, however, it may be a better idea to accept a settlement rather than risk going to court.
Medical Liens
A medical lien is a legal claim against your settlement. These claims are filed by hospitals, health insurance companies, and even Medicare/Medicaid, to allow these organizations to recoup what they spent on your care. Any liens are paid from your settlement funds first, and you receive the remainder.
To be clear, this is only fair; both personal injury settlement offers and court-ordered damages typically cover medical costs, and having your medical bills paid is a major reason to file a personal injury claim in the first place. However, liens can substantially affect the amount you take home from a settlement offer if you aren’t aware of them.
In many cases, liens can be negotiated down, increasing your final take-home number. Your attorney can help you better understand your best course of action regarding medical liens and personal injury settlements, so you don’t accidentally agree to something that won’t meet your needs.
The Offer Itself
Insurance adjusters spend a lot of time putting together settlement offer numbers, but that time isn’t intended to maximize your recovery. Instead, they are collecting the same documentation as your attorney, then running everything through the insurer’s internal formula to weigh things like:
- Your medical costs
- Comparable case data
- How the case would perform in front of a jury
The ultimate goal of this process is to identify the lowest possible number they think you’d accept. After all, insurance companies are companies, and they want to spend as little money as possible and close your case as fast as possible.
There are a few signs that a settlement offer might be a lowball intended to close your case quickly rather than fully compensate you for your losses. For example, if the settlement offer happens suspiciously quickly, before your attorney has completed their own documentation review? That’s a red flag. Similarly, if the offer arrives too fast, the insurer might be betting that you want to just get everything over with rather than spending extra time to negotiate an actually fair offer.
However, a fast offer doesn’t necessarily mean it’s unfair. To evaluate an offer, you need to compare it to your claim’s actual value, including medical costs, lost wages, and the strength of your documentation. If you are asking yourself whether you should accept a personal injury settlement offer, you need to determine where it falls compared to a realistic valuation of your claim and ignore any pressure to accept the offer quickly.
Settlement vs. Trial: Weighing the Tradeoffs
Once all the information is collected, it’s time to actually weigh the data and make a decision. Here’s what you’re comparing:
Accepting a Settlement Offer
When you accept a settlement offer, all the numbers are on the table up front. In short, settlements offer certainty. You know what you’ll receive, and you know you’ll get it substantially faster than if you go to trial. The downside is that the settlement offer could be substantially lower than what you’d receive from a jury awarding damages.
Going to Trial
Taking your claim to court gives you the possibility of a better bottom line, especially if you have been seriously hurt and you have lots of good evidence. The downsides can be significant, though. Trials routinely take months or years longer than settlement negotiations. It also leads to higher legal fees, which may come out of the final damages award, depending on the final judgment.
Furthermore, under Georgia’s modified comparative negligence law, going to trial might mean you receive nothing. The modified comparative negligence rule means that if you are found 50% or more at fault for an accident, you are disqualified from receiving damages. If you are found partially but less than 50% responsible, your damages are reduced by that percentage. For example, if the total recovery would have been $100,000, and you were found 30% responsible, you would only be eligible to receive $70,000.
In other words, going to court could actually reduce your recovery below the settlement offer, or even bar you from compensation entirely.
So, what does that mean for your decision? It means you need to understand your priorities and the actual value of your case. If you value certainty and the settlement offer is reasonably fair, you may prefer to simply accept what’s on the table. However, if the offer is particularly low, or if you have a well-documented claim and serious injuries, going to trial may be better. A skilled, trustworthy personal injury attorney can help you make that decision.
How the Firm Presents This Decision to Clients
Every law firm is a little different, but at Georgia Legal Counsel, we present the results of our evaluations and provide suggestions, not demands. Once we’ve completed our evaluation of your case, we walk you through it piece by piece:
- How much your total claim may be worth in damages
- Any medical liens that would affect your settlement or damages
- Where a trial would be held and how that could affect your case
- How your current settlement offer compares to a realistic damages award, minus liens and other costs
If you have any questions, we make sure to answer them, and give you the best information available. We may have a recommendation if the case clearly leans one way or the other, but we never tell you what to choose.
This is because our firm believes in clear, honest, and open communication with every client. We are here to support you and help you pursue justice, not just close your case as quickly as possible. An attorney’s role is to make sure you are fully informed. The choice itself belongs to you, because you’re the one who will have to live with the outcome.
Making the Decision That’s Right for You
There’s no single rule that can tell you whether or not you should take your personal injury claim to trial or accept a settlement offer. The only way to make that decision is to understand your case, your circumstances, and your priorities.
If you’ve received a settlement offer and you’re not sure whether it’s any good, or if you’re wondering whether you should take things to trial, Katie Taylor of Georgia Legal Counsel can help. Get in touch to discuss your case and learn more about what your best options are moving forward.