A Settlement Offer Below Your Medical Bills After an Ohio Rear-End Crash: What Goes Into Deciding Whether to Sue

Attorney Answer

The decision to settle or sue is yours; your lawyer advises, but has to follow your decision. What should drive it is what a court would likely award, weighed against the time, cost and risk of getting there. One Ohio rule matters a great deal at your claim's size: a jury can consider both what your providers billed and what they actually accepted as payment. Ask your lawyer to walk you through the numbers on both.

Whose decision it is. Under Ohio Rule of Professional Conduct 1.2(a), a lawyer must abide by a client's decision whether to settle a matter. Your lawyer's job is to give you a candid view of the risks; the choice stays with you.

How medical bills are valued. The Supreme Court of Ohio held in Robinson v. Bates, 112 Ohio St.3d 17, 857 N.E.2d 1195 (2006), that both the amount originally billed and the amount a provider accepted as full payment are admissible to prove the reasonable value of medical care, and that the jury decides the value, which can be either figure or something in between. In Jaques v. Manton, 125 Ohio St.3d 342 (2010), it held that a later statute on collateral benefits did not change that. So if the more than $8,000 is the billed figure and less was actually paid, a jury could value your medical expenses lower than the bills.

What else goes into it. The questions that usually decide whether suing improves the result:

Causation and treatment. How well your records tie the neck injury to the crash, and how the defense will use the absence of an emergency-room visit and the length of chiropractic care.

What a jury adds for pain and suffering in a case like yours, in your county.

The costs of suit, including filing and expert costs, and whether your fee arrangement changes once a suit is filed.

Time. A filed case can take a long while to reach trial.

Filing suit sometimes prompts a better offer, but no one can promise that, and your lawyer knows this insurer's patterns better than online comments do.

What you can do

1. Ask your lawyer for the billed and paid amounts for your treatment, and how each would likely be valued.

2. Ask for a realistic range of outcomes at trial and the costs of getting there, net of fees.

3. Ask how your fee agreement handles a filed suit and a trial.

4. Ask whether a demand at a specific number, or filing suit, would change the offer.

5. Even if you are handling this yourself, you would be best served by a brief phone consultation with a local Ohio attorney before you act. Most lawyers offer a short initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts — and on how your court actually handles this — is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. A lawsuit for your injuries must be filed within two years of the crash under Ohio Rev. Code § 2305.10(A), even while negotiations continue. Ask your lawyer to confirm the date.