What is the Average Case Value of a Wrongful Death Case?
In a 100-case sample taken from jury verdict research across the State of Florida (Fig. 1), statistical analyses from this sample showed that wrongful death cases averaged a total case value of $1,924,028. However, this sample showed a wide array of case values between $0, or a defense verdict, to $30 million dollars.
Figure 1. The breakdown of the geographic regions in the sample.
Of course, a $30 million-dollar case value doesn’t come around often, and it isn’t the usual award for wrongful death cases. Like this high-dollar value, the 100-case sample had seven other high-value outliers of over $4.25 million: $5 million, $10 million, $10,114,660, $11.5 million, $11.8 million, $12.24 million, and $15,206,113. When we remove these values, along with defense verdicts which have a $0 value, we find an average case value of $1,212,576.72, which suggests a more representative average case value of wrongful death cases.
In the above Figure 1, we have broken down the geographic regions of the sample.
The Orlando region is made up of wrongful death cases from Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties. The Tallahassee region is made up of wrongful death cases from Leon County and the Rest-of-State region is made up of the wrongful death cases from the other counties in the sample that are not included in the Orlando or Tallahassee geographic regions.
Of the 69 cases in the Orlando geographic region, including defense verdicts and outliers, we see an average case value if $2,210,342.02; excluding these measures, we see an average case value of $1,106,482.73. In the 20 cases from the Tallahassee geographic region including defense verdicts and outliers, we see an average case value of $1,006,960, and excluding defense verdicts and outliers, the average case value is $1,588,920. From the 11 Rest-of-State geographic region cases, we see and average case value, including defense verdicts and outliers, of $1.795,545.55, and excluding defense verdicts and outliers, an average case value of $916,666.67.
The average case value for a certain type of injury reveals little about the value of any specific case. For more complete information about how to place a value on a specific case, please visit our “What is my case worth?” blog.
If you’re a potential client or an attorney seeking a second opinion and would like to discuss the value of your case, please feel free to call the attorneys at Fasig Brooks. We are available 24/7, including nights, weekends and holidays, at (850)224-3310.
