Pain and Suffering Settlement Calculator

Free Pain and Suffering Calculator

Use this pain and suffering calculator as a tool to estimate settlement payouts. The victim is entitled to compensation for the physical and emotional distress they experienced.

Pain and Suffering Calculator

Use this calculator as a tool to estimate settlement payouts. The victim is entitled to compensation for the physical and emotional distress they experienced

Medical Expenses (Past & Future)

Multiplier (1.5 - 5)

Days of Pain

Daily Rate

Settlement Estimate

Disclaimer: This calculator is an estimate and not a substitute for legal or financial advice. The value of a claim may vary based on different factors

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How Pain and Suffering Calculators Work

Before filing a lawsuit, it’s helpful to estimate your claim using a pain and suffering calculator.

What is Pain and Suffering?

A plaintiff’s damages claim comprises economic and non-economic claims in a personal injury lawsuit. Pain and suffering is a legal term pertaining to non-economic claims such as compensation for substantial emotional and mental damages, physical pain, and other mental anguish suffered following a personal injury.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, conditions that qualify as physical pain and suffering are:

Traumatic brain injury
Back pain
Neck pain
Nerve damage
Paralysis, etc

Emotional pain and suffering include:

Insomnia
Fear
Psychological trauma
PTSD
Diminishment of quality of life, etc.

If you pursue a personal injury case when a company or person harms you, you can be compensated for pain and suffering to the extent of damages incurred as long as you can provide proof of correlation between damages and your pain.

What is the Formula for Pain and Suffering?

It is not exactly easy to put a monetary value on damages like back pain or loss of quality of life, but insurance companies developed two formulas that can be used to estimate pain and suffering damages: the per diem method and the multiplier method.

The Per Diem Method: This approach involves assigning a set rate for each day you endure pain until you reach maximum medical recovery as determined by your doctor. The set rate is typically your wages, although it could be another amount.

For example, if you earn $50 per day and your doctor estimates you’ll be in pain for a year, you would multiply $50 by 365 days and be entitled to $18,250 in pain and suffering damages.

The Multiplier Method: This method involves multiplying actual economic damages (lost wages, medical bills, etc.) by a set number to determine compensation for pain and suffering.

The multiplier is fixed at 1.5 to 5, depending on the severity of your injuries. For example, if you incur $140,000 in economic loss due to gastroparesis from taking Ozempic, you might be entitled to 5 times that amount in pain and suffering due to the lifetime effect of stomach paralysis.

Why Do You Need a Pain and Suffering Calculator?

With a pain and suffering calculator, you can determine how much compensation you’re entitled to for your tort claim and decide whether to accept a settlement offer. If you’re negotiating an out-of-court settlement, you can also use the estimated amount when sending a demand letter to an insurance company.

However, the calculator is not a substitute for legal advice. It’s important to contact an experienced personal injury lawyer who will consider the unique factors involved in your case and help you negotiate the highest settlement amount possible.

How Do Insurance Companies Calculate Pain and Suffering?

There’s no fixed method for calculating pain and suffering, but insurance companies usually use the multiplier and per diem methods. Some companies use computer programs that calculate the settlement amount for pain and suffering based on the type of injury, medical treatment, and length of treatment the plaintiff received.

Factors That Can Diminish Your Claim

Proving pain and suffering claims requires adequate documentation and evidence showing how your injuries have significantly affected your day-to-day living. However, regardless of the evidence, some aspects could diminish your claim.

They include:

Whether you were fully or partially at fault
Pre-existing health conditions and injuries
The severity, or rather lack thereof, of your injuries
The proven extent to which the injuries have diminished your quality of life
The amount of medical treatment you needed
Loss of earning capacity and income
Your recovery time
The insurance company’s liability limits

The lower the level of all these factors, the less compensation you’ll receive. For example, if you’ve only had a few visits to a doctor’s hospital ER, you’re likely to receive less compensation than someone who has had to make multiple visits.

It’s also possible for the state you filed the lawsuit in to place a cap on the amount of pain and suffering settlement that victims are entitled to.

Pain and Suffering Calculator Potential Damages

There are various potential damages that a pain and suffering calculator can be used to estimate settlement for. They are:

Economic Damages

The settlement for economic damages covers out-of-pocket wages and expenses such as diminished earning capacity, lost income, future medical expenses, and medical bills lost due to the incident. Economic damages ensure you receive compensation for lost income, medication, medical treatment, and physical and mental therapy paid for.

With a pain and suffering calculator, economic damages are calculated based on the actual expenses incurred. The calculator can estimate the value by multiplying the actual expenses by a multiplier ranging from 1.5 to 5. For example, if all your medical expenses are $100,000 and your severe injuries, the pain and suffering claim for economic damages would be $500,000.

Non-economic Damages

After your injuries, you may suffer from PTSD and anxiety, have to visit the doctor regularly, lose the ability to engage in your hobbies, or even have a shorter life expectancy. Economic damages do not cover pain and suffering, which can result in financial losses to victims. Therefore, all pain and suffering, i.e., mental and physical anguish, inconvenience, loss of activities, and diminished quality of life, are filed under non-economic damages.

The compensation for non-economic damages usually depends on the claim for economic damages. For example, if you’re going to therapy to overcome PTSD after a car incident, you could claim the amount you’ve paid for therapy as economic damages.

Now, if you have related pain and suffering, such as regular panic attacks whenever you need to drive, you will multiply the factor of your economic damages with the multiplier 1.5 to 5, depending on severity.

Although a pain and suffering calculator is a reasonable method to determine non-economic compensation, it is not comprehensive. It’s better to use an experienced car accident lawyer who can consider the exact impact of your injuries on your overall quality of life to estimate the best compensation for you.

General Damages

General damages are classified under noneconomic damages and are compensation for intangible injuries that are felt but not visible. What constitutes general damages is subjective, but it covers an injury’s impact on your life and the pain and suffering you’ve endured.

Common types of general damages in a tort case include:

Loss of consortium
Physical pain
Disfigurement
Mental health problems
Future pain and suffering
Physical impairment or disability
Reduced quality of life

General damages are complicated to calculate because they are intangible, subjective to the plaintiff’s feelings, and have no associated costs. You can support your claim for general damages with the testimony of an expert witness, for example, a pain management medical expert, to testify on the extent of your physical pain.

Personal Property Damages

If personal property is damaged in an incident, injury, or accident due to someone’s negligence or discomfort, a victim is entitled to financial compensation that adequately covers the cost of repairing the property, replacing it, or any other additional expenses.

Cases commonly involving personal property injury are car, boating, pedestrian, motorcycle, and commercial truck accidents. When using a pain and suffering calculator for personal property damages, you must estimate the value of everything that needs to be repaired or replaced.

For example, if you had to take your damaged car to the auto body shop, you should include the repair cost plus the cost of transporting the car to the mechanic.

Special Circumstances

Special circumstances are unique when estimating compensation with a pain and suffering calculator. Circumstances like pre-existing conditions, future medical expenses, lost future earnings, and the defendant’s level of negligence can increase or lower the multiplier when determining compensation. If the defendant’s actions were particularly reckless and preventable, you may receive higher compensation and vice versa.

Lost Wages

Lost wages refer to the economic amount you would have earned if you had not suffered a personal injury due to someone’s negligence. It includes your basic salary plus other benefits such as tips, bonuses, vacation pay, etc.

You can calculate pain and suffering related to lost wages using the per diem method, which multiplies your daily earnings plus other benefits by the number of days you need to recover from your injury.

Medical Expenses

Medical expenses are any costs incurred in treating injuries. They include doctor and ER visits, health and dental insurance premiums, prescriptions, co-pays, and over-the-counter drugs.

For example, if you suffer gastrointestinal issues from using Rybelsus and have to get medication like Domperidone for frequent vomiting, you can seek compensation for medical expenses incurred purchasing the drug.

Why You May Need to Calculate Pain and Suffering

If you’ve suffered pain due to someone’s negligence, you are entitled to proper compensation for your overall losses, including pain and suffering. Accounting for your pain and suffering in your claim also entitles you to receive a higher compensation.

Accidents and issues you may need to calculate pain and suffering for include, but aren’t limited to:

Wrongful death cases
Medical malpractice
Product liability cases
Slip and fall incidents
Workplace injuries
Car accidents
Surgical errors, etc

More About Pain and Suffering Calculators

Here’s other important information you should know when calculating pain and suffering:

The amount of settlement you can get out of pain and suffering depends on the extent and severity of your injuries. You can get up to 5 times the amount incurred on inevitable future costs, medical bills, lost wages, etc., or a set rate for each day you endure pain until you reach maximum medical recovery.

As some insurance companies do, you can calculate your settlement amount using the multiplier, per diem method, or a computer program. However, it is advisable to contact a personal injury lawyer who is skilled in estimating settlement amounts and will help you accurately estimate your settlement amount.

Mental pain and suffering is a non-monetary injury that includes stress, lower quality of life, disability, and disfigurement. It is calculated based on the impact of damage on the victim’s life, factors like age and line of work, and, of course, the severity of the injury.

An example of a pain and suffering settlement is the Ozempic case settlement. In this case, plaintiffs are suing the manufacturers of Ozempic for failing to include severe drug effects, such as gastroparesis, on its warning label. The settlement amount ranges from $300,000 to $700,000 and reflects pain and suffering damages for using the drug, such as mental distress, the impact of gastroparesis on the plaintiff’s life, physical discomfort, and emotional anguish.

Emotional distress is a type of pain and suffering. It is a non-economic loss from emotional trauma caused by an incident, injuries, diminishment of quality of life, and injuries suffered. Examples of emotional distress are embarrassment, anguish, humiliation, and mental distress over a disability.