“What’s my case worth?” is the most-asked question in workers’ comp, and most answers are either a formula that doesn’t exist or a shrug. The truth is in between: a settlement is a computable anchor plus a negotiated premium. This guide prices the anchor exactly and is honest about the rest.
The anchor: PD indemnity
Every settlement conversation starts from the permanent-disability indemnity — the number this site exists to compute. The rating percentage sets a statutory number of weeks (Lab. Code §4658), each week pays the PD rate (§4453), and weeks × rate is the anchor. The whole table lives on the PD money chart, and the settlement calculator runs your own numbers — PD %, wage, and year in; weeks, rate, total, and the life-pension line out.
How the 32% itself is built — impairment, occupation, age, apportionment, combination — is the rating pipeline; the weeks-and-dollars mechanics are in what a rating is worth.
Two ways to settle
Stipulated Award — pay the award, keep medical open
The parties stipulate to the PD percentage; the award pays out at the weekly rate over the statutory weeks, and the worker typically keeps lifetime medical care for the injury. A Stip roughly tracks the anchor: what’s mainly being negotiated is the percentage itself.
Compromise & Release — one check, everything closes
A C&R trades a negotiated lump sum for finality — usually including future medical. That’s why C&R totals exceed the bare PD number: the defendant is buying the medical tail and the risk. Pricing that tail (projected treatment, Medicare set-aside considerations, the worker’s tolerance for managing their own care) is the genuinely negotiated part no calculator can do honestly. The full structure decision — reopening rights, the non-settleable voucher, adequacy review — is in C&R vs. Stips.
The adjustments a rating engine can compute
Present value. PD pays weekly over years; money now is worth more than money later. The DWC’s commutation tables (Cal. Code Regs. §10169, 3%) convert the stream to today’s dollars — our reference case’s $42,050 stream commutes to $40,346.34. Lump-sum talk should happen in present-value terms, and the calculator shows both.
Life pension. At 70–99.75% PD, a weekly life pension follows the PD weeks (§4659(a)) — real, actuarial money that dwarfs the visible award on high ratings. Any settlement of a 70%+ case that ignores it is mispriced. See the money chart’s life-pension flags.
The fee. The WCAB approves applicant-attorney fees, commonly ~15% of the PD recovery (§4906). On the reference case that’s about $6,307.50 — the worker’s net anchor is the award minus the fee.
What honesty requires
Future medical, disputed AOE/COE, credibility, liens, venue, trial risk — these move real settlements and resist arithmetic. So use the division of labor: compute the anchor precisely (rating, indemnity, life pension, present value), then negotiate the premium knowingly. A party who shows up with the anchor computed and sourced — every step traceable to the schedule — negotiates from strength. That artifact is exactly what the calculator’s exhibit export produces.
RateString provides estimates for informational use; settlement valuation and strategy are legal judgments for counsel. Not legal advice.