You will find figures for this all over the internet. They are not drawn from any public record, because the Department of Justice records that settlement terms are frequently not reported to a court and not publicly available. This page therefore publishes no figure. It explains why none exists, and what actually sets the number instead.
By Michael Mangione, Legal Research EditorLast reviewed August 1, 202620 min read
The DOJ says the data is not public Trials are a small minority of cases A median is not an average Insurance often sets the ceiling Independent and attorney vetted No fee unless you recover The DOJ says the data is not public Trials are a small minority of cases A median is not an average Insurance often sets the ceiling Independent and attorney vetted No fee unless you recover
Our figure
None
We publish no average here, and two other pages already told readers we would not.
Why
Not public
The Department of Justice records that settlement terms often are not publicly available.
What is public
Trials
A small share of cases, reported as medians, and the national survey is from 2005.
What sets value
Cover
Available insurance frequently caps recovery whatever the injury turns out to be.
Key takeaways
Any site quoting an average is guessing. There is no public dataset of settlement values for it to have come from.
Trial awards are not settlements. The public figures describe verdicts in the minority of cases that got that far.
A median is not an average. In a field with extreme outliers the two describe very different things.
Available insurance is often the real ceiling. Which is why identifying every policy matters more than any national figure.
Editorial content, not legal advice
This guide is written and reviewed by our editorial team to be accurate and current. It is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. The figures quoted below come from a United States Department of Justice survey describing the year 2005 and are labeled as such throughout. They are trial awards rather than settlements, they are two decades old, and they are not an estimate of what any reader might receive. We are a referral service and are paid by attorneys.
01 Why this page has no number in it
Quick answer
Because we could not produce one honestly, and because publishing one would contradict five statements already made elsewhere on this site. We would rather explain the gap than fill it with something invented.
You arrived here looking for a figure. We are not going to pretend that refusing to give you one is the same as being helpful, so here is exactly what we can offer instead: the reason the figure does not exist, the only public data that touches the subject, and the specific things that determine what a case is actually worth.
Our research section already states that we publish no settlement averages because no public crash dataset contains settlement values, and our wrongful death guide says that any site quoting an average for a death is guessing. Having said that four separate times across those two pages, it would be incoherent to publish an average truck accident settlement on this one. What follows is the same position, argued properly.
Bottom line: the number you are looking for is not withheld here. It does not exist in any public record.
The record
The government says it is not there.
02 The Department of Justice on why the data does not exist
Quick answer
The federal statistical agency responsible for court data has addressed this directly. Its explanation is that settlement terms are frequently never filed with a court and are frequently not public, which is precisely why no reliable national figure can be built from them.
This is worth reading in the agency's own words rather than ours, because it settles the question rather than arguing it.
United States Department of Justice
The terms may not be reported, or may not be public
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Civil Bench and Jury Trials in State Courts, 2005
The report explains the limits of what can be known: Civil bench and jury trials are rare but important events. Records from civil trials are the primary source of information on civil cases in general. The terms of settlement agreements and other key information for civil cases resolved prior to trial may not be reported to the court or may not be publicly available. Read that last sentence twice. The body of the federal government whose job is compiling court statistics is saying that the settlements are not in the records. Read the report
Everything published as a semi truck accident settlement average has therefore come from somewhere other than a public record. Usually that somewhere is a firm's own past results, which are a selected sample of one business's history rather than a picture of anything national, and which nobody outside that firm can verify.
03 What public data does exist, and its limits
Quick answer
There is real public data, and it describes trials rather than settlements. The most authoritative national survey of it reports the year 2005, which is more than two decades before this page was written, and that itself tells you something about the state of the evidence.
We are quoting it because it is honest data honestly labeled, not because it answers the question you came with.
Same source, describing 2005 only
Trials are a small share of how cases end
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 2005
Among jurisdictions that reported both trial and non-trial dispositions, trials collectively accounted for about 3% of all tort, contract, and real property dispositions in general jurisdiction courts. For tort cases specifically, a companion report records that bench and jury trials accounted for an estimated 4% of all tort dispositions in 2005. On amounts, in that year the median final damage award for plaintiff winners in general civil trials was $28,000, motor vehicle accident cases accounted for 35 percent of all civil trials, and the median final award for plaintiff winners in motor vehicle accident cases was $15,000. Every figure in this box describes 2005 and describes verdicts, not settlements.
Three limits are fatal to using any of that as a guide to your case. It covers the small minority of cases that were tried rather than resolved. It is twenty-one years old as this page publishes. And it lumps every motor vehicle case together, from a parking dent to a fatality, which is why the median sits where it does.
Median
Not the same thing at all.
04 A median is not an average
Quick answer
The public figures are medians, meaning the midpoint. The word people search for is average, meaning the total divided by the number of cases. Where a few outcomes are enormous and most are modest, those two numbers are far apart and are not interchangeable.
This distinction is the commonest numerical error in this subject, and it runs in both directions.
A median ignores how extreme the extremes are. Half above and half below tells you nothing about the size of the top half.
An average is dragged upward by a handful of very large outcomes. Which makes it a poor guide to a typical case even when it is calculated correctly.
Catastrophic cases live in the tail. They are the outliers that distort averages, so an average built mostly from minor cases describes them least well.
Neither one is a valuation. Your case is not a sample from a distribution. It has particular facts, particular injuries and a particular defendant.
So when a page offers a single number, the first question is which statistic it is, and the second is what population it was drawn from. Most published figures answer neither.
05 What actually sets the number
Quick answer
Four things, none of which appears in any national statistic: the medical future, the earnings that were lost, who can be held responsible, and how much insurance stands behind them.
Anybody valuing a semi truck accident settlement is estimating these four and then testing them against the cover available. These are the inputs an attorney actually assembles. Our guide to catastrophic injury case value works through them in detail.
The medical future, costed. Surgery still to come, equipment, care hours, and how long all of that is needed. Usually the largest single component.
Lost earnings and lost capacity. Not just wages missed so far but what the person can no longer do, over a working life.
How many parties are responsible. A driver, an employer, a broker, a maintenance contractor. Our guide to who is liable covers this.
The strength of the liability evidence. A well-documented case and a contested one are worth different amounts on identical injuries.
The ceiling
Often decided before you arrive.
06 The ceiling, and the gap between the figure and the cheque
Quick answer
Two things sit on either side of any figure. Above it, how much insurance exists, which in serious cases decides the outcome more often than the injury does. Below it, the deductions, because the amount agreed and the amount a person receives are not the same number.
This is the single most useful thing to establish early, and it is entirely absent from every published average.
Commercial vehicles usually carry more. Federal minimums apply to interstate carriers, and our truck claims guides quote the schedule.
More than one policy may respond. A driver, an employer, an excess layer. Finding all of them is investigative work rather than arithmetic.
Your own coverage can matter. Where the other side's cover runs out, uninsured and underinsured motorist limits may be what remains.
A limit is not a valuation. An insurer offering its policy limit is describing its own maximum exposure, not what your claim is worth.
Which is why a realistic conversation about a truck accident settlement starts with who is responsible and what cover exists, rather than with a figure from a table. Our guide to choosing a truck accident lawyer covers what to ask about capacity to do that work.
Then there is the other end, which almost nothing published about settlement figures mentions at all. A gross figure is not a payment. Before anybody receives money, claims against the recovery are settled out of it, and those can be substantial in exactly the cases where the medical bills were largest.
Why the agreed figure is not the cheque
Medical liens and reimbursement rights. Where a health plan, a public program or a provider paid for treatment, it frequently has a right to be repaid out of the recovery. The larger the treatment, the larger that claim. Workers compensation. If the crash happened at work, the compensation carrier that paid benefits commonly has a claim against any recovery from the person who caused it. The fee and the case costs. Separate items, both deducted, and the written agreement should say which is which. Any statutory cap. Where a state limits particular categories of damages, that limit applies before deductions rather than after. None of this is hidden. It is all knowable in advance, and a firm should be able to set out the deductions alongside any figure it discusses.
The practical consequence is that two people can agree identical amounts and receive very different sums. So the question worth asking is never only what a case might be worth. It is what would reach you, after everything with a claim against it has been paid.
07 How to test any figure you are shown
Quick answer
Ask what it measured, whether it describes settlements or verdicts, what year it covers, and who compiled it. Most figures in this field fail at the first question, and almost all fail by the third.
Five checks, applicable to any source including this one.
1
Ask whether it is settlements or verdicts
They are different populations. Verdicts are public and rare. Settlements are common and largely unrecorded, which is the whole problem.
2
Ask whether it is a median or an average
And if nobody can say, treat the figure as decoration. The two answers differ enormously in a field full of outliers.
3
Find the year the data describes
Not the year of the webpage. The best public national survey on this describes 2005, and anything more recent needs its own source named.
4
Ask who compiled it and from what
A firm's own past results are a selected sample of one business. That is not dishonest in itself, but it is not national data either.
5
Ask what it would change
Even a perfect national figure would not tell you what your claim is worth, because your claim turns on your facts and your defendant's cover.
08 First steps
Quick answer
Stop looking for a number and start assembling the four inputs that produce one. All of them are things somebody has to go and find, and the earliest ones expire.
Four practical moves, in the order they matter.
Get the treatment documented properly. The medical record is the valuation. Gaps in it are read as gaps in the injury.
Establish who was involved and who employed them. This determines how many policies are in play, which frequently determines the ceiling.
Find your own declarations page. Uninsured and underinsured limits are a document you already have access to today.
Decline to discuss value early. Any figure named before treatment stabilizes is guesswork, including a figure you name yourself.
If you want a working estimate rather than a national average, our settlement calculator shows how the components combine, with the same caveats set out above.
Warning signs
Confident numbers, no sources.
09 Red flags
Quick answer
A published average with no source, a figure quoted at a first meeting, a calculator that produces a number without asking about insurance, and any statement about what cases like yours are worth.
The last is the most seductive because it sounds like experience rather than a guess.
How a number gets invented
A national average with no citation. There is no public dataset it could have come from, so either a source is named or the figure is decoration. A value at the first call. Before the medical picture is known, nobody can price the largest component of the claim. Cases like yours. Comparison to unnamed past results is not evidence and cannot be checked. A calculator that never mentions cover. If it does not ask what insurance exists, it is not modelling the thing that usually decides the outcome. Averages presented as expectations. Even a sound average describes a population, and you are not one.
A closing word on what we have done here. Refusing to publish a figure costs this page traffic, because the number is what people search for. We think publishing an invented one would cost more, and it would contradict what we have already told readers on two other pages. A free case review costs nothing, and you can read how we match people with attorneys before deciding anything.
How we vet every lawyer
This is a standard rather than an ordering. An attorney either clears it or does not.
Active, discipline-free license
Verified good standing with the state bar, with no unresolved discipline on record. You can check this yourself too.
Will not value your case on the first call
A firm naming a figure before reading the medical records is selling rather than assessing.
Investigates what cover exists
Because available insurance frequently sets the ceiling, and finding every policy is work somebody has to actually do.
Clear contingency terms
Fees and case costs put in writing up front, so you know exactly how it works before signing.
Tell us what happened and we will only match you when a case genuinely fits.
Help in all 50 states
MVA Lawyer Network is a nationwide guide. Wherever it happened, we can connect you with an independent attorney licensed in that state.
Northeast Southeast Midwest Southwest West Coast Mountain West Gulf States Alaska and Hawaii
State law affects value more than any national figure could capture. What may be recovered, whether damages for pain and suffering are capped, how responsibility is divided where more than one party contributed and whether a claimant's own share reduces or bars recovery, and what minimum insurance a private motorist must carry all vary by state. Two identical injuries in two states can be worth materially different amounts for reasons that have nothing to do with the injuries. The trial figures quoted on this page are national aggregates for 2005 and describe no state in particular. The deadline for bringing a claim, known as the statute of limitations, is running now.
Sources and authorities
Federal statistical publications. Government reports are public information.
Civil and tort trial outcomes
Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice, Civil Bench and Jury Trials in State Courts, 2005. Source of the statement that civil bench and jury trials are rare but important events, that records from civil trials are the primary source of information on civil cases in general, and that the terms of settlement agreements and other key information for cases resolved prior to trial may not be reported to the court or may not be publicly available. Also the source of the trial rate of about 3 percent of general civil dispositions, the median final damage award of 28,000 dollars, the finding that motor vehicle accident cases accounted for 35 percent of all civil trials, and the median final award of 15,000 dollars in motor vehicle accident cases. All amounts describe 2005. BJS.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Tort Bench and Jury Trials in State Courts, 2005. Source of the finding that bench and jury trials together accounted for an estimated 4 percent of all tort dispositions in 2005. BJS.
On the age of this data, stated plainly. The figures above describe 2005 and this page was published in 2026. We have not found a more recent national survey of state court trial outcomes of comparable authority, and rather than quietly using old numbers as though they were current, we are telling you their date every time they appear. The fact that the best public evidence on this subject is two decades old is part of the answer to the question the page asks.
Why there is no figure of our own. Two other pages on this site already address it, in four separate statements: our research hub says we publish no settlement averages anywhere on this site and that anybody publishing one is not drawing it from public crash data, and our wrongful death guide says that any site quoting an average for a death is guessing. Publishing a number here would have made those statements false. We would rather lose the search traffic that a confident figure attracts than run a site whose pages contradict each other on a question that affects what people expect from their own claims.
What we have not used. Commercial verdict and settlement reporters exist and are compiled by private publishers. They are not public information, we have not quoted them, and we would not treat them as national data if we had, because what they contain is what was reported to them. We have also published no averages derived from any firm's own results, including any attorney in our network.
Our editorial standards
How we keep this guide accurate and worth trusting.
01
We do not invent the headline number
This page exists to answer a query about averages and it publishes none, because none can be sourced.
02
Every figure carries its year
The trial data here describes 2005 and says so in the body, the sources and the page's structured data.
03
We keep our pages consistent
Two other pages promise no settlement averages, four times over. This one honours that rather than quietly breaking it.
04
Government sources only
Private verdict reporters are not public data. We used the Department of Justice instead.
Michael Mangione Verified editor
Legal Research Editor · Founder, The Mangione Group, Inc.
MVA Lawyer Network is edited by Michael Mangione, who has spent more than twelve years working inside contingency-based law firms, building intake departments, designing qualification frameworks, and studying how claims are screened and pursued from the first call through resolution. Average settlement figures are the most requested thing in injury marketing and the least defensible. Having built the pages that publish them, he is aware that the number usually comes from the marketing budget rather than from data.
General information, not legal advice. We publish no settlement averages and no estimate of what any reader might receive.
What is the average settlement for a truck accident?
There is no honest answer to that question, and the Department of Justice explains why. Its statistical agency records that the terms of settlement agreements for cases resolved before trial may not be reported to the court or may not be publicly available. So no public dataset of settlement values exists to average. Figures you find elsewhere have come from private compilations or from a firm's own past results, neither of which is national data.
Is there any real public data on what these cases are worth?
Some, and it covers trials rather than settlements. The Bureau of Justice Statistics surveyed state court civil trials for 2005 and found that trials accounted for about 3 percent of general civil dispositions, with an estimated 4 percent of tort dispositions reaching a bench or jury trial. In that year the median final award in motor vehicle cases was 15,000 dollars. Those are 2005 verdicts across all severities, not settlements, and not a guide to a serious case.
Why does the data stop at 2005?
We have not located a more recent national survey of state court trial outcomes with comparable authority. That is worth knowing rather than hiding: the best public evidence on this subject is two decades old. It also means that anybody publishing current national figures should be able to name the source, and most cannot. If a newer authoritative survey exists we would rather quote it, and this page will be updated if one is identified.
What is the difference between a median and an average here?
A median is the midpoint, with half the outcomes above and half below. An average is the total divided by the number of cases, so a small number of very large results pulls it upward. In injury litigation the extremes are extreme, which means the two figures sit far apart and neither describes a typical case well. Catastrophic claims are precisely the outliers that distort averages, so an average describes them least well of all.
Then what actually determines what my case is worth?
Four things, none of which is in any statistic. The medical future, costed properly, which is usually the largest component. Earnings and earning capacity lost over a working life. How many parties can be held responsible. And the strength of the evidence on liability. Then, over all of that, how much insurance exists, because in serious cases the available cover rather than the injury frequently decides what can be recovered.
Are commercial truck cases worth more than car cases?
Often, and the main reason is money rather than fault. Interstate carriers are required to carry substantially more insurance than a private motorist, so the pool available to a seriously injured person is usually larger. Commercial operations also generate records that a private driver never does, which tends to make liability easier to establish. Neither point tells you an amount, but both explain why the two situations differ.
The insurer offered the policy limit. Is that a good outcome?
It may be all that insurer will pay, which is not the same as all that is available. There may be a second policy, an excess layer, an employer with its own cover, or another responsible party. Your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage may also respond. A policy limit is a fact about a contract, not a valuation of your injury, and it is worth establishing what else exists before treating it as the answer.
Should I use an online settlement calculator?
As a way of seeing which components make up a claim, yes. As a prediction, no. The test is whether it asks about insurance: a calculator that never mentions available cover is not modelling the thing that most often determines the outcome. Treat any output as an illustration of structure rather than an estimate, and be particularly wary of a tool that produces a confident single figure from three questions.
Do I have to pay anything up front?
Injury firms generally work on a contingency basis, meaning the fee is a percentage of what is recovered set out in the written agreement and there is nothing to pay up front. Case costs, meaning experts and records and filing fees, are a separate item from the fee, and the agreement should say plainly who carries them and what happens to them if the case does not succeed.
Is what I tell you private?
Yes. What you share in a case review is kept private and is used only to match you with an attorney who fits your situation. One distinction is worth understanding: true legal confidentiality, called attorney-client privilege, only attaches once you actually have an attorney-client relationship with a lawyer. Submitting a form to a referral service is not the same thing. If that matters to you, raise it directly with the attorney.
What does it cost to use MVA Lawyer Network?
Nothing. We are a free, independent referral service, not a law firm, and we do not give legal advice. Requesting a case review costs you nothing and puts you under no obligation. When a situation fits, we connect you with an independent attorney who reviews it directly, and we may be paid a referral fee by that attorney. That fee does not add anything on top of their percentage.
The Department of Justice says the settlement data is not public. Everyone quoting an average is guessing.
One short, private form. No cost, no obligation, and no fee unless there is a recovery.
