What is my case worth?

It is the most searched question in California workers' compensation, and the one most often answered with a number somebody made up.

A workers' compensation case has a part that can be calculated from a statute and a part that nobody can calculate from a form.

The calculable part is permanent disability indemnity, the life pension, the voucher, and the return-to-work supplement. All four are below, computed the way §§ 4658, 4453, 4659, 4658.7 and 139.48 actually say.

The part that cannot be calculated is future medical care — and in a serious case it is routinely the largest single number in the settlement.

Any tool that hands you one total has either left future medical out or invented it. This one does neither. It shows you the components, tells you which questions move them, and stops where honesty requires stopping.

What moves the number, in rough order

Whether you have a rating yet. Without one, permanent disability cannot be computed at all.

Your date of injury. Section 4453 sets a different weekly cap for 2014-and-later, for 2013, and for 2006 through 2012 — and the 2013 and 2006–2012 caps move with the rating band. The rates, with the statute for each.

Whether you crossed 70%. At 70% the award adds a life pension for life under § 4659, which escalates annually and is routinely left out of settlement conversations entirely.

Whether your employer made a qualifying return-to-work offer. If they did not, that is $6,000 under § 4658.7 plus $5,000 under § 139.48 — and the § 139.48 supplement has a one-year application deadline that runs from when the voucher was served, not from when your case ends.

Apportionment. Under §§ 4663 and 4664 the carrier can attribute part of your disability elsewhere, and after Lindh even an asymptomatic pre-existing condition can support it. What makes an apportionment opinion hold up.

And whether anyone other than your employer was involved. That opens a civil claim under Labor Code § 3852(a) which pays for pain and suffering, loss of consortium and sometimes punitive damages — none of which exist in the compensation system at any rating. The overlap most people never hear about.