Lawsuit Advances & Realistic Client Expectations

We often receive applications where the client is requesting an unrealistic amount of money given the circumstances of their pending lawsuit. The intent of this article is to establish realistic expectations with regards to the money that can be advanced on a pending lawsuit. And we will address this issue in the framework of personal injury lawsuits, such as auto accidents and premises slip-n-fall cases.

The two biggest issues which affect the value of your personal injury case, are the severity of your injuries and the defendant’s insurance policy limits. Other factors include: liability (who was at fault), prior advances or liens on a case, and lost wages.

To begin with, we list some actual examples of what past clients have received and their respective injuries:

$65,000 – 3 Surgeries

$10,000 – 3 Surgeries

$8,500 – 2 Surgeries

$7,500 – 1 Surgery

$7,000 – 1 Surgery

$5,000 – 1 Surgery

$5,000 – Planned Surgery

$3,000 – 1 Surgery

$2,500 – No surgery

$1,500 – No surgery. Epidural nerve block injection

$1,000 – No surgery. Epidural nerve block injection

$1,000 – No surgery.

As you can see in the above list, clients who received larger amounts of money, all had one thing in common, they had surgeries or planned surgeries do to injuries from the accident.

Whereas, personal injury clients who have not had surgery and do not plan of having surgery, often will get funded in the range of $1,000 to $3,000.

If you are looking for funding on your personal injury case, and you have not had any surgeries as a result of the accident and you do not plan on having any surgeries, I would suggest the maximum amount of money you request is $3,000. If you fall into this category, your realistic expectation is likely in the range of $1,000 to $3,000 for a lawsuit advance.

If you are looking for funding on your personal injury case, and you have had surgery as a result of the accident, you will likely qualify for at least $5,000 and possibly much more. And if you have not had surgery, but are planning on having surgery in the near future, you will likely qualify for $3,000 to $5,000 in funding.

Besides whether you have had surgery or not, another major factor is the size of the insurance policy. For example, in the above list, we had two clients, where each client had 3 serious surgeries. Yet one client was funded $65,000 and the other client was funded $10,000. The difference here had to do with the insurance policies. On the case where we funded the client $65,000, that case had a $2,500,000 commercial insurance policy in play. As opposed to the other case, which only had a $300,000 standard auto insurance policy.

And lastly, if you have had a prior advance on your case, then that always makes it much harder for us to advance additional money on the case. When a client has had a prior advance, if we can fund the client more money, we will have to pay-off the first lawsuit advance company. Paying off the first lawsuit advance company always will eat into the amount of money we could have advanced you the client. For example, we had a client injured in a boating accident, which required several surgeries. This client came to us for funding, but the client had a large prior advance of $50,000 on his case. To pay-off that first funding company would have required $75,000. However, upon reviewing the case, the most we felt comfortable advancing was $65,000, which would not have even covered paying off the first advance. So for that particular client, we could not approve him, despite the fact that he had serious surgeries, all because the prior advance was just too large to pay-off.

And the reason we pay-off existing advance companies, is so our advance will have a first lien priority on the case when your case settles and pays out. For us to NOT pay-off an existing advance company, would mean for us to accept a more junior lien position on the case and that too more risky for us. This is analogous to a second mortgage being more risky than a first mortgage from a banks perspective. For us to fund a client money, we will always insist upon a first lien position to protect our interests.

In summary, if you have a personal injury case and are looking for funding, i.e. a lawsuit cash advance, I suggest making the following monetary requests: If you did not have surgery, the most I would request is $3,000. If you have a planned surgery, the most I would request is $5,000. And if you did have surgery, the minimum I would request is $5,000 and possibly much more, depending upon insurance policy limits. Please contact Mr. Eric A. Kelly, with www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com with any questions.