Policy Limits vs Recovery In Personal Injury Cases

What do you mean the policy limits have nothing to do with how much money I will get?
Many many times in a car crash case I will hear from either you the potential client or the medical provider something to the effect, “hey great news, Mr. Kleinberg; I found out that the guy that hit me has $100,000.00 of insurance coverage!” The general belief is that you the potential client or the medical provider might get more money because there is a lot of insurance coverage. In my opinion, this is simply not the case.
Ironically, many times the more insurance coverage that is available, the less, yes I repeat, the less, the insurance company will offer you. Why is this so? The reason involves the concept of “bad faith”.
One of the biggest concerns of any insurance company is that you the potential plaintiff goes to court and gets more money from the jury then the at-fault insured had available in coverage. If this happens, the defendant, the insured policy holder i.e. the person who hit you, could then be on the hook to you for the difference between the jury verdict and their insurance coverage. The defendant, insured, could now potentially sue their own insurance company for bad faith.
In light of the above therefore, the higher the amount of coverage, especially in a soft tissue case, the less concerned the insurance company is about resolving the case because they know that they have a “$100,000.00 cushion” to protect them from potential bad faith.
By contrast, if there is a low limit such as $10,000.00, and the injuries are more than soft tissue, the insurance company is much more likely to pay the full amount of coverage.
In conclusion, it is a mistake for you to try and figure out how much money you might recover in a car crash based on the amount of available insurance coverage. The better approach is to simply work up the case properly and come up with a reasonable evaluation based on a multitude of factors including injuries, the amount of property damage, and how you might present to a jury.