What is my injury worth?

1. What it cost you

Medical care already received, medical care you still need, income you lost while you were hurt, and earning capacity you lost permanently. Texas calls these economic damages, and every one of them has to be proven with a document, not an estimate.

People say this as "my bills", "my time off work", "what I am out of pocket".

2. What it took from you

Physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, disfigurement, and — where it applies — loss of consortium. Texas calls these noneconomic damages. They have no receipt, which is exactly why the strength of the medical record decides how seriously they get taken.

People say this as "pain and suffering", "what I went through", "my life is not the same".

3. Your share of the blame

Texas reduces the recovery by the percentage of responsibility assigned to you, and bars it entirely if your share is more than 50 percent. A strong case on damages with a weak case on fault is worth far less than the bills suggest.

People say this as "they say I pulled out too", "the report blamed both of us".

4. The money that can be reached

A claim is worth what can be collected. That means the at-fault driver's liability limits, any commercial or employer policy behind them, and your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. A catastrophic injury caused by a driver carrying state-minimum coverage runs into a wall that has nothing to do with how badly you were hurt.

People say this as "he only had the minimum", "the insurance says that is all there is".

Medical treatment you have already had

The ambulance, the emergency room, the imaging, the follow-up visits, the physical therapy, the injections, the surgery. What matters for value is not only the total but whether the record shows the treatment followed logically from the crash and continued without unexplained gaps.

Medical care you still need

Future care is proved through a treating physician or a retained expert who states what is medically necessary going forward and what it costs. A recommendation for surgery that has not happened yet is one of the most significant single facts in an injury claim, and it needs to be in a doctor's words, in a record.

Income you lost

Wages, salary, tips, contract income, self-employment income. Proved with pay records, tax returns, employer statements, and a medical note taking you off work. Income that cannot be documented is income an adjuster will decline to pay.

Earning capacity you lost permanently

Different from lost wages, and often larger. This is the difference between what you could have earned over your working life before the injury and what you can earn after it. It applies when an injury permanently limits lifting, standing, driving, or the specific work you were trained to do.

Out-of-pocket costs

Prescriptions, medical equipment, mileage to appointments, home help you had to hire, modifications to a vehicle or a home. Small individually, and the category people most often forget to track.

Property damage

Repair or actual cash value of the vehicle, plus a rental while it is out. This is usually resolved separately and well before the injury side of the claim, and settling it does nothing to the injury claim.

Physical pain

Past and future. The record that supports it is the ordinary one: what you told the paramedic, what you told the emergency physician, what the therapist wrote every week, what the pain diagram in the chart shows.

Mental anguish

Anxiety about driving, sleep that stopped working, the mood change the people around you noticed first. This is proved partly through treatment and partly through the testimony of people who knew you before.

Physical impairment

The things you can no longer do. Not the pain itself — the loss of function. Lifting a child, climbing stairs at work, standing through a shift, playing the sport you played every weekend for twenty years.

Disfigurement

Scarring, surgical scars included, and any permanent visible change. Photographs taken over time matter here more than any description.

Loss of consortium and household services

The claim of a spouse, and in some circumstances a parent or child, for the loss of the relationship and of the work you used to do at home.

Your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage

Texas insurers must offer UM/UIM coverage in at least the Chapter 601 limits, and it has to be rejected in writing to be absent from a policy. Many people carry it and do not know. It pays when the at-fault driver has no coverage or not enough, and it is your own contract, so it is often the most reliable additional source in a serious case.

An employer or commercial policy

If the at-fault driver was working — delivering, hauling, driving a company truck, running an errand for a business — a commercial policy with far larger limits may sit behind the personal one. Establishing course and scope of employment is what unlocks it.

Medical payments coverage

Med-pay is a small no-fault benefit on your own policy that pays medical bills regardless of who caused the crash. It does not reduce what you recover from the other driver, and it is frequently left unclaimed.

Additional defendants

A vehicle owner who entrusted it to an unsafe driver, a company whose maintenance failure contributed, a bar that overserved a drunk driver, or a government entity responsible for a road condition. Each brings its own coverage and its own legal requirements.

Objective findings

An MRI showing a herniation, an X-ray showing a fracture, an EMG confirming nerve involvement, a surgeon's operative report. Findings a machine or a scalpel produced carry weight that a description of pain cannot.

Consistent, documented treatment

Care that starts promptly and continues on a schedule tells a coherent story. Care that starts six weeks late, stops for two months, and restarts invites the argument that something else happened in between.

A permanent-impairment or future-care opinion

A treating physician stating that the injury is permanent, or that a specific future procedure is medically necessary, changes the category the claim sits in.

Proof of the life you had before

Work records, training certificates, race entries, photographs, coaching schedules. Physical impairment means the distance between before and after, and someone has to be able to see the before.

Clean liability

Independent witnesses, video from a nearby business, a citation issued to the other driver, event data recorder output. Anything that removes the argument over the fault split protects the whole number.

Available coverage, found early

Identifying a commercial policy or your own UM/UIM in the first weeks changes the strategy of the entire claim. Finding it after a settlement has been signed changes nothing at all.

Waiting to get checked out

Adrenaline masks injury and people go home from crashes feeling fine. A gap between the crash and the first medical visit is the single most common argument an adjuster makes, and it is entirely avoidable.

Giving a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer

You are under no obligation to give one. The questions are written to produce quotable answers about how you feel today and about what you were doing in the seconds before impact.

Missing appointments

Gaps in a treatment record get read as recovery, whether or not that is what happened. Life gets in the way and that is real; the record does not explain itself.

Posting about it

A photograph of a good day at a family barbecue is a defense exhibit. Everything public is collectible.

Settling the injury claim early

The first offer usually arrives before anyone knows whether the injury is temporary. A signed release is final, and it covers the surgery you needed six months later.

Ignoring liens and health-insurance subrogation

Hospital liens, health plan reimbursement rights, and government-benefit claims come out of a settlement. They are negotiable, and negotiating them is part of the work that determines what actually reaches you.