Published Settlements: How to Read What NYC Injury Firms Publish

Every injury firm in New York publishes results. A page of large numbers, a rotating banner, a billboard with a figure and a case type. Those numbers are usually true, and they are still one of the easiest things in legal marketing to misread.

Here is how to get real information out of them.

The words are not interchangeable

The term	What it actually means	What to watch for
Verdict	What a jury awarded	Can be reduced on appeal, and is not what anyone received yet
Settlement	An agreed figure, no trial	The most comparable number of the four
Judgment	A court's entered award	May include interest and may be appealed
"Recovered"	Whatever the firm decides it means	Could be a combined total across several plaintiffs or years

A firm advertising a verdict is telling you it tried the case, which is real information. A firm advertising a settlement is telling you what it negotiated. Both are worth knowing. They are not the same accomplishment.

What a published number leaves out

• It is the gross figure. The legal fee, case costs and medical paybacks all come out before the client sees anything.
• A verdict can shrink. Appellate courts in New York can reduce an award that "deviates materially from what would be reasonable compensation."
• Large future damages may be paid over time. When future damages exceed $250,000, New York generally requires them to be paid through an annuity rather than a lump sum, so a headline number can be a stream of payments stretching over decades.
• Insurance often set the ceiling. New York only requires a private driver to carry $25,000 per person in bodily injury coverage. A seven-figure result usually means a commercial defendant, not a better lawyer.
• The firm may not have tried it. New York permits lawyers at different firms to share a fee when the client agrees in writing, so a published result can belong to a case that was referred out.

The average and the typical case are different animals

Public data makes this concrete. In the New York City Comptroller's claims reporting for fiscal 2023, motor vehicle personal injury claims against the City settled for an average of $308,441 — and a median of $65,000.

Motor vehicle claims against the City, FY 2023	Figure
Average settlement	$308,441
Median settlement	$65,000

Both numbers describe the same pile of cases. The average is pulled upward by a handful of catastrophic results; the median sits closer to what an ordinary crash claim actually produced. Firms advertise the shape of the average and never the shape of the median, which is why a single published figure tells you so little about your own case.

What the advertising rules already require

New York's rules of professional conduct regulate this directly:

• A claim about past results must be factually supported.
• Advertising that touts results must carry the disclaimer that prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
• Comparisons to other lawyers require factual substantiation.
• Practice areas may be listed, but no firm may call itself a specialist without certification from an approved organization.

That disclaimer is not decoration. It is the state requiring every firm to concede, in its own advertisement, that the number you are reading describes a case that already happened to somebody else.

How to check a number

• Ask for the case name, county and year. A real result has all three.
• Ask whether it was a verdict or a settlement, and whether it survived appeal.
• Ask whether the firm tried the case or referred it, and who handled the trial.
• Ask whether it was one plaintiff or a group.
• Look for a pattern rather than a peak. Ten mid-size results in cases like yours tells you more than one enormous result in a case nothing like yours.

The comparison that actually predicts something

Published results are worth comparing when they are:

• Verified against a court record or a published report, not just asserted
• Recent, because a firm's trial bench changes
• Similar to your case in type and in who the defendant was
• Typical of the firm's work rather than its single best day

Better questions than "how much have you won?"

• How many cases like mine have you resolved in the last three years, and what did the range look like?
• Which of these results did your firm take to verdict, and when was the most recent one?
• Who at the firm would actually handle mine?
• What is the weakest part of my case?

Specific answers mean the firm knows its own record. Vague ones, or a fast pivot back to the single biggest number on the wall, mean something else.

None of this makes published results useless. It makes them evidence, and evidence rewards the reader who checks it.

Browse published recoveries with those distinctions in mind, and follow the cited firm sources when comparing cases.

This article is general information about New York law, not legal advice for your situation.

Sources: NY Rules of Professional Conduct · NYSBA, attorney advertising Q&A · CPLR 5501 · CPLR 5041 · Vehicle and Traffic Law 311 · NYC Comptroller, annual claims reporting