The pain and suffering multiplier is a way to estimate what a fair settlement offer would be in a personal injury case. It adds up your economic damages and then uses a multiplier between 1 and 5 to estimate your noneconomic damages. The result can drive settlement negotiations in your case.
Economic versus noneconomic damages
To understand how the pain and suffering multiplier, also known as the Multiplier Method, works, you need to know the difference between:
- economic damages, and
- noneconomic
Both of these are types of damages that you suffer in an accident. Your personal injury case demands financial compensation for all of your damages.
Economic damages
Your economic damages are losses that you sustained from the accident that can be easily described in a dollar amount. Also known as “special damages,” your most prominent economic damages are typically your:
- medical bills,
- lost wages, and (in a car accident case)
- property damage.
These losses are reflected in the expenses that you paid or income that you lost. They include reasonably anticipated future losses, as well.
Noneconomic damages
Your noneconomic damages are those that cannot be easily stated in a dollar amount. Also known as “general damages,” these include compensation for things like your:
- physical pain,
- emotional distress,
- mental suffering,
- loss of enjoyment of life, and
- loss of consortium suffered by your family.
According to the California Civil Jury Instructions:
No fixed standard exists for deciding the amount of these noneconomic damages. The jury must use its judgment to decide a reasonable amount based on the evidence and the jurors’ common sense.[1]
Because they are so subjective, the personal injury lawyers at our law firm know that people can disagree widely about how much compensation you deserve for these losses. Nevertheless, if you suffered them because of someone else’s negligence, you deserve to be compensated for them in a personal injury claim.
How the multiplier method works
The Multiplier Method uses the following formula:
- add up all of your economic damages,
- choose a number between 1 and 5 for the multiplier,
- multiply your economic damages by that number to estimate your noneconomic damages, and
- add your economic damage total to the estimation of your noneconomic damages.
For example: Jim is in a car crash. His $10,000 car is totaled and he loses $10,000 in income while he recovers. His medical treatment has cost him $70,000 and physical therapy will cost him another $10,000. This adds up to $100,000 of economic losses. A multiplier of 2 would estimate Jim’s noneconomic losses at $200,000. Based on this calculation, a fair settlement offer for Jim’s case would be $300,000.
Factors in choosing the multiplier
Which number is used for the multiplier makes a huge difference in the outcome. The number is based on how much the accident has affected your life. If it were completely life-altering, it would be a higher multiplier. If you made a full recovery within a few months, it would be close to a 1.
Some factors for determining how much the accident changed your life are:
- how long it took you to recover from it,
- whether you will make a completely full recovery or would have a permanent disability,
- how much it will force you to change your lifestyle,
- whether you can still do the things that you liked to do, before the accident,
- if you suffered physical injuries that include a disfigurement or dismemberment,
- whether you can perform the activities of daily life without help, and
- the severity of the injuries.
Factors that can reduce the settlement amount
The outcome produced by the pain and suffering multiplier is not always what you can expect in a personal injury settlement. It can be reduced by 3 important things:
- a lack of insurance coverage,
- your state’s shared fault rules, and
- your share of the blame for the accident.
Our personal injury lawyers have found that any of these three factors can substantially reduce, or even completely eliminate, the compensation a claimant is likely to receive.
Insurance coverage
Most accidents are covered by insurance. For example, auto insurance policies cover car crashes, while renters’ or homeowners’ insurance will cover most slip and fall injuries and dog bites.
These insurance policies often have caps. This is the maximum amount that the insurer will pay for a claim against the policy. If you suffered serious injuries and you would be entitled to a lot of compensation for them, the odds that you reach this cap will grow. If the cap is reached, the insurance company will pay the maximum amount on the policy and you will have to look somewhere else for the remainder.
If there is no insurance coverage, you will have to recover all of what you are owed from another source.
Shared fault rules
Each state has laws for what happens if the victim was partially to blame for the accident. This can happen if, for example, you:
- trip, fall, and get hurt, but you should have seen the hazardous condition, or
- get hit by another car, but you were also driving negligently.
The shared fault laws in each state fall into three categories:
- pure comparative negligence, where your compensation gets reduced by your percentage of fault,[2]
- modified comparative negligence, where your compensation gets reduced by your percentage of fault, but you would recover nothing if you were more than half at-fault,[3] and
- contributory negligence, where you would recover nothing if you were at-fault, at all.[4]
Where your accident happened can make a big difference in the outcome.
Your own fault for the accident
If you were partially to blame for the accident and your injuries, the compensation that you be entitled to receive would be reduced. Depending on the shared fault laws in the state in which you were hurt, you could be barred from recovering anything.
Examples of pain and suffering
A few examples of pain and suffering are:
- the physical pain of suffering a broken bone,
- the chronic pain felt by someone who has suffered nerve damage,
- the emotional pain caused by a burn injury victim’s skin disfigurements,
- being unable to do an activity that you used to enjoy because of a disability from the accident,
- the mental anguish of suffering a cognitive decline from having a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and
- posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Calculating pain and suffering damages for these experiences can be very difficult. They are subjective and your medical records may not be of much help.
Criticisms of the method
While the pain and suffering multiplier method is often used, there are critics who stress its downsides, like:
- the subjectivity in choosing a number for the multiplier,
- it oversimplifies the victim’s suffering,
- it can be inconsistent,
- identical injuries can have vastly different effects on different people, and
- it can be abused or manipulated to justify high demands and larger settlements.
Our personal injury lawyers often use the Multiplier Method as a starting point to get a general idea of what a fair settlement offer would look like.
The per diem method for pain and suffering damages
Another accident settlement formula is the Per Diem Method. The Per Diem Method uses the following formula:
- add up all of your economic damages,
- pay the victim a daily rate, usually the victim’s pre-accident earnings, for each day they suffered from the accident, and
- add these 2 numbers together.
For example: Lucy is the victim of medical malpractice. She suffers $50,000 in medical expenses and lost income and feels the effects of the doctor’s negligence for 1 year. At the time of the accident, she made $100 per day in income. The Per Diem Method would estimate her noneconomic losses at $36,500. A fair settlement offer would be $86,500.
Like the Multiplier Method, the Per Diem Method has its downsides, including:
- the outcome is often much lower than an expected jury verdict,
- the number of days that the accident impairs your quality of life can be difficult to pinpoint, and
- the victim’s income drives the result.
The law in California
In California, personal injury attorneys and insurance adjusters often use the Multiplier Method to estimate the fair compensation amount for a personal injury lawsuit. Other options include:
- the Per Diem Method, and
- looking for comparable cases and seeing how much they were worth.
The shared fault rule used in California’s personal injury laws is pure comparative negligence.[5] This means accident victims can recover compensation even if they were more than half at-fault for their injuries.
A new law in California allows a deceased victim’s family members to recover compensation for pain and suffering in wrongful death cases.[6]
The statute of limitations for filing a personal injury lawsuit is typically 2 years.[7]
Legal Citations:
[1] California Civil Jury Instructions (CACI) No. 3905A.
[2] See Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal.3d 804 (1975) (California).
[3] See CRS 13-21-111 (Colorado).
[4] See Muteff v. Invacare Corp., 721 S.E.2d 379 (2012) (North Carolina).
[5] See note 2.
[6] California Code of Civil Procedure 377.34 CCP.
[7] California Code of Civil Procedure 335.1 CCP.
