Some of the figures you've seen are real. Most are mislabelled, and a few have no source at all. This page is the argument rather than the audit: why an average cannot price your claim even when the number behind it is sound. For the figures themselves, with every source and sample, see average settlement amounts.
Reviewed August 24, 2026 · verification policy · changelogSettlements are confidential contracts. No court files them, no agency collects them, and carriers treat their claim data as competitive property. What leaks into public view is the unrepresentative sliver, verdicts, appeals, and government payouts, which our sourced examples page shows skew enormously large. Insurers and regulators do publish average claim payments, and those figures are real; they are simply not settlements. We've collected all of them, along with the quoted averages whose sources don't exist.
Injury payouts are among the most skewed distributions in finance. Watch what one big case does to an "average":
| Nine routine claims (illustration) | 9 × $12,000 | $108,000 |
| One catastrophic claim (illustration) | 1 × $2,000,000 | $2,000,000 |
| The 'average' of all ten | $2,108,000 ÷ 10 | $210,800 |
| What 9 of 10 claimants actually got | the median | $12,000 |
In a skewed distribution the mean describes almost nobody. Any site selling you an "average" is handing you a number dominated by catastrophic cases that don't resemble yours, in either direction. This one is a labelled illustration, but the effect is real: in the Thomson Reuters verdict series the mean runs nearly fifteen times the median.
A resolved sprain and a spinal fusion aren't the same claim at any price. Your number is a function of your documented damages, your severity band, and your state's fault rule, variables an average, by definition, throws away.
The framework both sides of the table already use: (medical bills + lost wages) × a severity multiplier of 1.5–5×, plus property damage, minus your fault share. It's computed from your claim, every line of it is checkable, and it's what an "average" was always pretending to approximate. Run it in the calculator, and when an offer arrives, grade it against your band, not against a stranger's statistic.
No agency publishes one: settlements are confidential contracts and nobody collects them. Average insurance claim payments do get published, and we list every one of them on our average settlement amounts page. But a claim payment is not a settlement. More importantly, an average would mislead even if it existed: settlement distributions are extremely skewed, so a handful of catastrophic cases drags the mean far above what a typical claim resolves for. Estimate your claim from its own inputs instead — the multiplier math on this site.
Because the query is popular and a confident number converts visitors into leads. Notice that the figures disagree with each other, rarely cite a source you can open, and never explain their distribution. A number nobody can verify isn't information. It's bait.
For a resolved soft-tissue claim, the honest frame is the band, not a point: roughly 1.5–2× your medical specials plus lost wages, minus your fault share. With $4,000 in treatment and $800 in lost wages that's about $8,000–$10,400 gross before fault adjustments. Computed from your inputs, which is the only 'typical' that means anything.
Yes, and more than we once credited. Regulators and insurers publish average claim payments, industry researchers publish settlement-to-medical-bill ratios, and the government published tort verdict medians until 2005. All of it is on our average settlement amounts page with the sample and the limits stated. What none of it is, is an average settlement. When we can't verify a figure to a primary source we still don't quote it. That's our editorial policy.