Factor 1: Your damages — present and future
Everything starts with what the crash cost: treatment to date, what your doctors project, income lost, earning power reduced. Future care is the piece unrepresented claimants miss — a claim priced before your medical picture is complete is priced wrong in the insurer's favor.
Factor 2: How clearly fault sits on the other driver
California's comparative fault rule means every percentage point argued onto you discounts the whole number. Clear-liability crashes — a rear-end at a Base Line signal with a camera — hold value; disputed left-turns leak it. Evidence gathered early is what keeps the percentages honest.
Factor 3: The insurance actually available
Value collapses to coverage. The at-fault driver's limits, umbrella policies, employer liability if they drove for work, and your own UM/UIM (remember: roughly one in six California drivers is uninsured) set the realistic ceiling — finding every policy is half the job.
Factor 4: Your documentation
Identical injuries settle differently on paper strength: treatment consistency, wage records, photographs. The file is the case.
Factor 5: Who's asking
Insurers price the same file differently depending on whether trial is a credible outcome. That's not cynicism — it's their arithmetic, and it's why a car accident attorney's involvement changes the same file's price. It's also why “can I afford a lawyer” has the answer it does: the fee exists because it usually pays for itself.
Want the five factors run on your actual facts? That's what our settlement guide covers in depth — and what a free consultation does in twenty minutes.
