Personal injury settlement value by state.

The single most consequential input to a personal injury settlement value is the jurisdiction. State-level distinctions — tort versus no-fault auto regimes, comparative-fault rules, statutory damages caps, jury-pool composition — produce settlement medians that differ by 5–10× across states on identical fact patterns.

The data is unforgiving. A clear-liability low-speed rear-end MVA with moderate cervical strain and $24K in medical specials settles for a median of:

• $485K in Texas · Harris County (tort, modified-51 comparative, dense plaintiff verdict history)
• $305K in California · Alameda (tort, pure comparative, dense data)
• $268K in Illinois · Cook (tort, modified-51, dense data)
• $112K in Florida · Miami-Dade (no-fault, pure comparative, PIP-capped MVA economics)
• $78K in New York · Bronx (no-fault, pure comparative, serious-injury threshold)

Each state is a separate jurisdiction fold trained on its own verdict cohort. On a held-out test set, the model's valuations are 90 to 92% accurate against the realized settlement (median absolute percentage error), each shown with its 90% confidence band. See how this is calculated and the per-state calibration →

Same case, different state, six-times-larger settlement number. A verdict database hands you raw comparables and leaves the math to you. Predict returns a jurisdiction-tuned number with its 90% band already calculated from those comparables, so you walk into the negotiation with a defensible figure rather than a stack of results. The model trains separate jurisdiction folds for each state and, where the verdict density allows, each county.

Twelve states operate no-fault auto regimes: Florida, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (choice), Massachusetts, Kentucky (choice), North Dakota, Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, and Utah. In a no-fault state, the MVA plaintiff is restricted to medical and economic damages under PIP thresholds unless the injury crosses a state-defined serious-injury threshold. The compression on MVA settlement values in no-fault states is dramatic.

Notably: premises liability is not affected by no-fault auto. PL settlement values in Florida and New York actually run higher than the state's MVA medians for the same severity tier — uncommon nationally, and a direct consequence of the no-fault regime applying only to auto cases.

The four comparative-fault regimes carry different settlement implications:

• Pure comparative (FL, CA, NY, ~13 states). Plaintiff recovers reduced by their share of fault, even at 99% fault. Highest settlement-value floor.
• Modified 50% (~10 states). Plaintiff recovers if 49% or less at fault. Recovery barred at 50%.
• Modified 51% (TX, IL, ~22 states). Plaintiff recovers if 50% or less at fault. Recovery barred at 51%.
• Contributory negligence (NC, MD, VA, AL, DC). Any plaintiff fault bars recovery entirely. Lowest settlement-value ceiling.

The contributory-negligence jurisdictions produce notably different settlement dynamics — defendants negotiate harder because a 1% fault finding is a complete defense.

Confidence bands narrow with verdict density, so we publish a state only once its cohort is thick enough for a calibrated band. Five states clear that threshold today, each carrying 180-plus comparable verdicts (CA, TX, NY, FL, IL). The remaining jurisdictions are in active training and will appear as their density clears the same bar. National coverage rolls out as the data allows, not before.