Settlements for a brachial plexus injury from a car accident range from modest five-figure amounts for mild nerve stretches that heal on their own to well over a million dollars when a nerve is torn from the spinal cord and the arm is permanently disabled. The brachial plexus is the nerve network running from the C5 through T1 vertebrae in the neck down into the shoulder, arm, and hand, and a collision can stretch, tear, or rip these nerves when force drives the shoulder violently away from the head.1StatPearls. Anatomy, Head and Neck: Brachial Plexus What your case is actually worth depends on how badly the nerve was damaged, what your future medical care and lost earnings will cost, how much insurance is available to pay, and whether any share of fault gets assigned to you.
How the Type of Nerve Injury Sets the Range
The single biggest factor in valuation is what happened to the nerve itself. Brachial plexus injuries fall into three categories, and each carries a different prognosis and a different price tag.
- Neuropraxia (stretch). The nerve is stretched but stays intact. Most people recover 90% to 100% of function without surgery. Because the outlook is good, settlements stay in the lower range and focus on medical bills and short-term lost wages.2Cleveland Clinic. Brachial Plexus Injury: What It Is, Symptoms, Treatment and Types
- Rupture. The nerve tears partially or completely but not at the spinal cord. Surgery can often reconnect it, but without surgery there is generally no meaningful recovery. Settlement values rise substantially because of surgical costs, prolonged rehab, and uncertainty about how much function returns.2Cleveland Clinic. Brachial Plexus Injury: What It Is, Symptoms, Treatment and Types
- Avulsion. The nerve root is ripped away from the spinal cord. Surgery is required to regain any function at all, and avulsions frequently produce permanent loss of use in the affected arm. These cases command the highest settlement values.3Mayo Clinic. Brachial Plexus Injury – Symptoms and Causes
Nerves heal slowly. Recovery from any brachial plexus injury takes months at minimum,2Cleveland Clinic. Brachial Plexus Injury: What It Is, Symptoms, Treatment and Types and that timeline shapes how each claim is evaluated.
What Goes Into the Settlement Number
Medical Costs, Past and Future
Medical costs begin with emergency care, neurosurgical consultations, and diagnostic imaging. Electromyography and MRI are the standard tools for identifying where and how badly the nerve is damaged.4Mayo Clinic. Brachial Plexus Injury – Diagnosis and Treatment EMG testing typically has to wait at least four weeks after the injury because earlier tests can produce false negatives.5Medscape. Peripheral Nerve Injuries Workup
When surgery is needed, the direct costs alone can be enormous. A study of 170 patients who underwent surgery for brachial plexus injuries reported median direct healthcare charges of about $35,200 in the first year, with some patients exceeding $800,000 for complex reconstructions. The same research estimated the total per-person economic burden of a traumatic brachial plexus injury at roughly $2.38 million over a lifetime when both direct medical costs and lost productivity were counted.6American Society for Peripheral Nerve. Direct Cost of Surgically-Treated Adult Traumatic Brachial Plexus Injuries
Future medical expenses are usually the largest single category in severe cases. A life care planner projects the cost of ongoing physical therapy, occupational therapy, follow-up surgeries, orthotics, assistive devices, and home modifications you will need for the rest of your life. That projection turns an abstract injury into concrete numbers the insurer can evaluate, and it directly moves the settlement.
Lost Wages and Lost Earning Capacity
Past lost wages are straightforward: compare what you earned before the accident to what you earned afterward, using tax returns and pay records.
Lost future earning capacity is where the numbers can get very large, and it usually requires an economist. The calculation compares what you would have earned without the injury against what you can now earn with it, projected across your remaining working years, factoring in your profession, education, work history, historical raises, and the labor market for your field. For someone whose dominant arm is permanently compromised, this figure can dwarf every other category. A 30-year-old manual laborer with an avulsion faces decades of reduced earnings that can run into seven figures when properly calculated.
Pain, Suffering, and Loss of Use
Non-economic damages cover the ways the injury changes daily life: pain, loss of use of a limb, inability to perform hobbies or household tasks, depression, and anxiety. These are subjective, but in brachial plexus cases they tend to be substantial because the limitations are visible and concrete. Struggling to button a shirt, hold a child, or grip a steering wheel is something adjusters and juries understand.
Attorneys commonly estimate this category by applying a multiplier to total medical expenses. A mild injury with a full recovery warrants a low multiplier; a permanent avulsion with chronic pain lands at the higher end. Some attorneys instead calculate a daily dollar amount for suffering from the date of injury forward. Neither method is legally mandated, and adjusters run their own internal valuation models, but these frameworks give both sides a starting point.
How Comparative Fault Cuts the Number
If you were partly at fault for the accident, the settlement shrinks. Most states use some form of comparative negligence, which reduces recovery by whatever percentage of fault is assigned to you. Found 20% at fault on a $500,000 claim, you lose $100,000 and collect $400,000.
The threshold matters. A majority of states follow a modified comparative negligence rule that bars recovery entirely once your fault reaches 50% or 51%, depending on the state.7Cornell Law Institute. Comparative Negligence A smaller number of states use pure comparative negligence, which allows recovery even at 99% fault, reduced accordingly. Adjusters know these rules and investigate hard for evidence you were speeding, distracted, or unbelted, because pushing your fault percentage up is the cheapest way to lower what they owe.
Why Available Insurance Often Caps the Real Payout
A settlement’s theoretical value and its actual payout are different things. State-mandated minimum liability coverage for bodily injury runs from as low as $10,000 per person in some states to $50,000 in others, with most states requiring only $25,000 to $30,000.8Insurance Information Institute. Automobile Financial Responsibility Laws By State When lifetime costs can reach $2 million, a driver carrying minimum coverage cannot come close to making you whole.
Your own underinsured motorist coverage fills the gap. UIM pays the difference between the at-fault driver’s policy limits and your actual damages, up to your own UIM limits. With $250,000 in UIM and an at-fault driver carrying $25,000, you can potentially recover up to $275,000 in total. Without UIM, a minimally insured at-fault driver may cap your recovery at that minimum policy limit no matter how severe the injury. This is one of the most financially devastating surprises in serious injury cases.
Why Timing Changes the Amount
Reach Maximum Medical Improvement First
Settling too early is one of the most expensive mistakes in brachial plexus cases. Maximum medical improvement is the point where your doctor determines you have recovered as much as you are going to. Until then, no one knows the true extent of your permanent limitations, and any number negotiated before that point is a guess. Nerve injuries heal slowly, so reaching MMI can take a year or more. Accepting an early lowball offer because bills are piling up often means leaving far more money on the table than the short-term relief is worth.
The finality of the release is what makes this decision permanent. Once you sign, you cannot come back later for more money on the same accident, even if your condition worsens or complications develop that no one anticipated. Courts almost never set aside a signed release because the injured person later regrets the deal.
Watch the Filing Deadline
Every state imposes a deadline for filing a personal injury lawsuit. Most states allow two to three years from the date of the accident; some allow as few as one and others as many as five or six. Miss the deadline and you lose the right to sue, which eliminates any leverage in settlement negotiations. Check the deadline in your state early, because the treatment window for nerve injuries can make the filing period feel shorter than it is.
What Comes Out of the Gross Settlement
Medical Liens and Subrogation
Before you spend a dollar, other parties may have a legal claim to part of the settlement. If your health insurer paid for accident-related care, it likely has a contractual right to be reimbursed from your proceeds. That is subrogation, and it can take a significant bite out of your net recovery.
Hospital liens work similarly. If you were treated without insurance, the hospital may have filed a lien against any future personal injury recovery. Medicare and Medicaid also have statutory reimbursement rights, and federal law requires that Medicare’s interests be protected in any settlement that includes future medical expenses.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1395y – Exclusions From Coverage and Medicare as Secondary Payer If you are a Medicare beneficiary or expect to become one within 30 months, a portion of the settlement may need to be set aside in a dedicated account for future injury-related care Medicare would otherwise pay for. Ignore this and Medicare can refuse to cover those future expenses.
Lien amounts are often negotiable. An experienced attorney can frequently reduce what health insurers, hospitals, and government programs demand, and every dollar shaved off a lien is a dollar you keep.
Taxes on What You Receive
Most of a brachial plexus settlement is tax-free. Under federal law, damages received for personal physical injuries or physical sickness are excluded from gross income, whether paid through a settlement agreement or a court judgment.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 104 – Compensation for Injuries or Sickness The exclusion covers compensation for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and loss of limb function, as long as the payment stems from the physical injury itself.11Internal Revenue Service. Settlements – Taxability
Two exceptions matter. If you deducted medical expenses on a prior return and got a tax benefit from that deduction, the portion of the settlement reimbursing those expenses is taxable.11Internal Revenue Service. Settlements – Taxability Punitive damages are always taxable, even in a physical injury case, because the statute explicitly excludes them from the tax-free treatment,10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 104 – Compensation for Injuries or Sickness and they must be reported as other income.12Internal Revenue Service. Tax Implications of Settlements and Judgments
Attorney Fees and Costs
Personal injury attorneys almost universally handle brachial plexus cases on contingency, so nothing comes out of pocket. The standard fee is roughly one-third of the gross recovery if the case settles before a lawsuit is filed, rising to around 40% if litigation becomes necessary. Case costs like filing fees, expert witness fees, medical record charges, and deposition expenses are separate from the attorney’s percentage and are typically advanced by the firm, then reimbursed from settlement proceeds. Read the fee agreement carefully before signing so the split is clear. What you actually take home is the gross settlement minus attorney fees, minus case costs, minus any liens satisfied out of the proceeds.