How we calculate the bands.

Editorial principles.

Three rules govern every band on the site. First, every figure traces to a named source on the same page; if a band cannot be sourced, it does not ship. Second, where a band is wide, the page explains what moves a case to either end — severity, prognosis, recovery time, comparative-fault deduction, the strength of medical evidence, the procedural pathway. Third, we use the local currency and local notation that the courts themselves use, and we do not convert across currencies for comparison purposes — different jurisdictions price different heads of loss differently, and a converted number implies a false equivalence.

We treat the methodology page as the canonical answer to “why should I trust this number?” for every band on the site. The methodology is not a marketing document; it is the point at which we expose the working.

United States.

US figures are state by state. Each of the fifty states plus the District of Columbia maintains its own tort law, statute of limitations, comparative-fault rule (pure comparative, modified-50, modified-51, or contributory negligence), and statutory caps on non-economic and punitive damages. There is no single national quantum guideline; bands are constructed from a combination of jury verdict reporters (the most prominent being VerdictSearch and Jury Verdict Research, both subscription-only but cited per page where we draw on them), state judicial council statistics where published, settlement aggregates from insurance industry data (Insurance Research Council, NAIC), and the relevant statutory cap.

Where a state imposes a cap that bites — California's MICRA on medical malpractice, the Texas medical-malpractice cap, Florida's reformed non-economic cap under HB 837, and others — the band reflects the cap as in force on the date of the band's last review. MICRA in particular has been substantially restructured by AB 35 (effective 2023) on a phased schedule split between cases involving death and cases not involving death; we name the year and the schedule for any California medical-malpractice band.

Federal overlays are noted where relevant. The Federal Tort Claims Act limits recovery against the federal government and bars punitive damages in those claims. The Federal Employers' Liability Act governs railway-worker injury. The Jones Act governs seafarer injury. Where one of these applies, the band reflects the federal framework, not the state's default tort rules.

United Kingdom.

UK figures are taken from the Judicial College Guidelines for the Assessment of General Damages in Personal Injury Cases, currently in their 16th edition. The Guidelines are updated every two years and published by the Judicial College, an arm of the Judiciary of England and Wales; they are persuasive in Northern Ireland and routinely consulted in Scotland alongside Scots-law authority.

Where the Whiplash Reform tariff applies — the statutory tariff set by the Civil Liability Act 2018 and The Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021 for cases arising on or after 31 May 2021 — the JCG bands for soft-tissue neck injury are superseded by the tariff figures. We label tariff bands clearly and use the tariff figure rather than the JCG figure for cases within the tariff's scope.

For Scotland we cite the Court of Session Judicial Studies Committee's informal practice and reported decisions in the Inner House and Outer House. Scots law on personal injury produces broadly comparable bands to England and Wales for general damages but applies a distinct prescription regime under the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973.

Republic of Ireland.

Irish figures use the Personal Injuries Guidelines published by the Judicial Council in 2021, which replaced the prior Book of Quantum. The Guidelines are referenced both by the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) in pre-litigation assessment and by the courts in litigated cases. The Guidelines substantially recast soft-tissue and minor-injury bands compared to the Book of Quantum; we use the current Guidelines for all bands and note where reported decisions are still settling around the older figures.

We reference both PIAB award data, published periodically by the State Claims Agency, and reported decisions of the High Court and the Court of Appeal where the Guidelines have been applied. Where a decision moves a band materially, the page's bands and the methodology references are updated.

Canada.

Canadian non-pecuniary damages are capped by the trilogy decided by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1978: Andrews v Grand & Toy Alberta Ltd., Thornton v Prince George School District No. 57, and Arnold v Teno. The cap was set at C$100,000 in 1978 dollars. We inflation-adjust by the Bank of Canada CPI per the practice of the courts; the present-day ceiling sits in the C$400,000s for the most catastrophic cases. The cap applies only to non-pecuniary loss; pecuniary loss (lost income, future care) is uncapped.

Province-specific frameworks are noted on the relevant page. In Ontario, the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule (SABS) governs first-party accident benefits paid by the injured driver's own insurer, sitting alongside the tort claim against the at-fault driver, and a statutory deductible applies to non-pecuniary tort awards below threshold amounts. In British Columbia, ICBC's no-fault scheme has substantially restructured PI compensation since 2021; tort recovery has been narrowed and replaced for many accident classes with a benefits-based regime. Quebec operates entirely under a no-fault auto regime administered by the Société de l'assurance automobile (SAAQ) for motor injury, with civil-code damages applying outside the motor sphere.

Australia.

Australia is jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Each state and territory has its own Civil Liability Act, Compulsory Third Party (CTP) insurance scheme for motor injury, and impairment thresholds. We name each scheme on the relevant page: New South Wales under the Motor Accidents Injuries Act 2017 (MAIA) administered by SIRA and icare; Victoria under the Transport Accident Act 1986 administered by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC); Queensland under the Motor Accident Insurance Act 1994 administered by the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC); and analogues in Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT, and the Northern Territory.

Non-CTP personal injury (workplace, premises liability, public liability) is governed by the relevant state's Civil Liability Act and case law. Most states impose a statutory cap on general damages and a threshold below which general damages are not recoverable. The bands on country and state pages reflect the caps and thresholds in force at the date of last review.

Spain.

Spanish figures use the Baremo — the scale of compensation for injuries arising from road traffic accidents, set by Law 35/2015 and updated annually by Royal Decree published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado. The Baremo is the single most structured quantum framework in Europe: every injury is assigned a points score, and the points-to-euros conversion is age-adjusted on a published schedule. The system is binding for road traffic claims and persuasive in non-traffic personal injury and medical negligence litigation.

We reference the table-by-table structure of the Baremo directly: Table 2.A for permanent injury, with sub-tables for the points-per-injury and the euro-per-point conversion by age; Tables 2.B and 2.C for temporary disability and moral damages; and the supplementary tables for life- shortening, severe deformity, and dependent-care needs. The statute of limitations under Article 7 is one year — among the shortest in Europe.

Italy.

Italian figures use the Tabelle Milanesipublished annually by the Tribunale di Milano. The Milan Tables are not statutory but are applied throughout Italy by virtue of consistent adoption by courts and the Corte di Cassazione's endorsement of them as the reference scale for non-pecuniary damages. The framework is percentage-of-impairment based: a medical-legal expert assesses the claimant's percentage of permanent disability (danno biologico), and that percentage is converted to euros via the table, age-adjusted.

The Tabelle Romane (Rome Tables) provide an alternative framework historically used in some southern courts; we reference both where the regional practice diverges from the Milan figures, but we treat the Milan Tables as the default. Italian law also uses the danno morale category for moral damages tied to specific events (criminal conduct, family loss); we explain the interaction with the danno biologico calculation on the country page.

Germany.

German figures use the Schmerzensgeldtabelle — a published compilation of court decisions on Schmerzensgeld (pain and suffering) organised by injury category and severity. The leading commercial editions are the Hacks/Wellner Schmerzensgeldbeträge and the Beck'sche Schmerzensgeldtabelle. The system is not statutory but is treated by practitioners as the canonical quantum reference, and German courts cite the table entries by case number when assessing general damages under Section 253 BGB.

We work from the published cases: each band on a German country page references the body of decisions in the relevant Schmerzensgeldtabelle category, with citations to the leading appellate decisions where they bear on the band. Statutory liability under the StVG (motor vehicles) and the ProdHaftG (product liability) is noted separately. The general statute of limitations is three years from the end of the year in which the claimant knew of the harm (Section 195 BGB).

France.

French figures use the Référentiel Mornetand the Barème indicatif d'indemnisationpublished by Dalloz, both non-statutory references used by courts of appeal and by the working group of judges convened periodically to update them. France's specific feature is the highly granular “nomenclature Dintilhac” — a court-developed taxonomy of heads of loss that has been the dominant framework since 2005 and that breaks each claim into pre-consolidation and post-consolidation, pecuniary and non-pecuniary, and specific component heads (déficit fonctionnel temporaire, souffrances endurées, préjudice esthétique, and others).

We use the Référentiel Mornet for the headline bands and cross-reference Dintilhac heads where they bear on the presentation. For motor injury, the Loi Badinter (Law 85-677 of 5 July 1985) imposes near-strict liability on motorists toward non-driver victims and substantially streamlines compensation; we name it where the band depends on it. The general statute of limitations for personal injury is five years under Article 2224 of the Code Civil, with ten years for medical-negligence cases.

Inflation adjustment.

Where a band relies on a source published in an earlier year, we adjust to the current year using a stated inflation series. UK figures use the Office for National Statistics CPI series. Canadian non-pecuniary awards use the Bank of Canada CPI per the courts' own practice (Lindal v Lindal applies the standard formula). US figures use the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U for All Urban Consumers. Spanish and Italian Baremo and Tabelle figures are themselves updated annually and need no further adjustment.

We do not silently inflate older case figures to make a band appear larger. Where adjustment materially affects a band, the page names the source year and the index used. Where the source is current, no adjustment is applied.

When authorities conflict.

Authorities sometimes give different numbers. The most common cases are these. In England and Wales, the JCG band for a soft-tissue neck injury and the Whiplash Reform tariff figure for the same injury can differ by an order of magnitude — the tariff figure governs cases within its scope and we use it without protest. In the United States, jury verdict reporter aggregates and insurance settlement data may diverge for the same injury class because they measure different populations (verdicts versus settlements); we use settlement data for settlement bands and verdict data for verdict bands, and we say which when both are relevant. In Italy, the Tabelle Milanesi and the Tabelle Romane sometimes diverge for the same percentage of impairment; we use Milan as the default and note Rome where regional practice differs.

The general rule is to be transparent. Where two authorities disagree, we say so and explain which we are using and why. We do not pick whichever authority is larger.

Editorial review.

Drafts are produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor before publication. The editor verifies each cited authority against the source — the JCG edition, the Baremo Royal Decree, the Schmerzensgeldtabelle case reference. Where the AI draft contains an unfamiliar case name, statute number, or numerical figure, the editor independently verifies it before publication. AI hallucinations of case names and statute numbers are the single biggest editorial risk; the verification step catches them.

The byline on every page is “MyClaimWorth Editorial” with optional named contributors as we add them. Material corrections are logged with a date in the page footer. Pages are refreshed at least quarterly and immediately when an authority document is updated.

Known limits.

The methodology has limits we are explicit about. First, authority documents change between our review cycles; if a new edition lands the bands lag until the sweep, and pages affected during that window may show stale figures. We advertise the last-updated date so the lag is visible. Second, jurisdictions that rely on case law rather than a published table (most US states, Germany at the marginal case) compress reported decisions into a range, which loses nuance the source has — a band hides whether the underlying decisions are cluster-tight or widely distributed. Third, settlements (the population most relevant to claimants) are statistically harder to characterise than verdicts (the population the verdict reporters tabulate). Where the band is settlement-derived, we say so.

None of these limits change the fact that each band is sourced. They do mean that the band is a starting point, not a quote. The page that hosts the band makes that clear.

Corrections.

Corrections are accepted at hello@myclaimworth.com. We aim to reply within two business days and to update affected pages within five. Material corrections are logged at the foot of the affected page with a date and a short note describing the change.

Frequently asked.

• Where do the settlement bands actually come from?

  Every band traces to a named authority document on the relevant country page. The UK uses the Judicial College Guidelines; Ireland uses the Personal Injuries Guidelines; Canada anchors to the Andrews trilogy non-pecuniary cap and provincial precedent; Australia uses state Civil Liability Acts and CTP impairment scales; the US uses state-by-state tort law plus statutory caps and jury verdict reporters; Spain uses the statutory Baremo; Italy uses the Tabelle Milanesi; Germany uses the Schmerzensgeldtabelle; France uses the Référentiel Mornet and Barème Dalloz. We do not publish bands derived from settlement-data scrapes or AI estimates without a named authority.
• How do you adjust older figures for inflation?

  UK figures are adjusted using the Office for National Statistics CPI series. Canadian non-pecuniary awards anchored to Andrews are inflation-adjusted with the Bank of Canada CPI per the practice of the courts. US dollar figures are adjusted using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U where the underlying source predates the publication date. We disclose the adjustment method on any page where it materially affects the band shown.
• What do you do when two authorities give different numbers?

  We name both. In England and Wales, for example, soft-tissue injuries falling within the Whiplash Reform tariff are valued at the statutory tariff figure even though the JCG band would yield a higher number. We label each band with the applicable authority and explain when each applies. We do not pick whichever authority is more favourable to the claimant.
• Are the bands point estimates or ranges?

  Always ranges. A band gives the realistic settlement value for a category of injury at a given severity tier. The position within the band depends on facts the page cannot see — prognosis, contributory fault, the strength of medical evidence, and the procedural pathway. We avoid point estimates because the system itself does not produce them.
• How often is the methodology updated?

  When a guideline edition changes (UK JCG every two years, the Italian Tabelle Milanesi annually, the Spanish Baremo annually by Royal Decree, the Irish Personal Injuries Guidelines as amended), we update the affected bands and the page-level last-updated date within ten business days. The methodology page itself is reviewed at least once per quarter.
• What can go wrong with the methodology?

  Three things, and we name them. First, authority documents change between our update cycles — if a new edition lands, the bands on the site lag until we sweep through. Second, courts can decline to apply a guideline in atypical fact patterns; bands are starting points, not commands. Third, where a jurisdiction relies on case law rather than a published table (most US states, Germany at the marginal case), the bands compress reported decisions into a range, which loses some nuance.
• Do you ever invent or estimate figures?

  No. If a number is on the site, it is sourced. Where a jurisdiction has thinly published quantum (a small US state with little jury-verdict reporting, for example), we say so on the country page and present a wider band rather than over-precise figures. Where AI assistance was used to draft a section, the human editor verified each cited authority before publication. We do not pass through AI-generated numbers without source verification.
• How do you handle currency conversion?

  We do not convert. Each country page shows figures in the local currency that the courts and authority documents themselves use — pounds for the UK, euros for Ireland, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, US dollars for the US, Canadian dollars for Canada, Australian dollars for Australia. Cross-jurisdiction comparison tables show local-currency bands side by side without conversion to avoid implying a false equivalence between systems that price losses differently.