"They offered me a settlement. Is it enough?"

Check 1 — Which kind is it?

Stipulations with Request for Award — paid over time, future medical treatment stays open, and the case can be reopened for new and further disability within five years of the date of injury.

Compromise and Release — a lump sum, and future medical treatment closes permanently.

These are not two prices for the same thing. A C&R that is larger than a Stips offer may still be worth far less, because you are also selling your medical care.

Check 2 — What is the rating, and is the string right?

Every permanent disability award is built on a rating string. It is checkable arithmetic, and it goes wrong regularly — wrong occupational group, wrong age, a body part left out, an impairment converted incorrectly. How to read yours.

Check 3 — Does the money match the rating?

The percentage converts to weeks, the weeks convert to dollars, and the schedule is cumulative — higher ratings earn more weeks per point. Then permanent disability advances already paid are credited against it.

Check the credits. Overstated advances are one of the most common quiet errors in a settlement. The arithmetic.

Check 4 — Is anything missing from the claim?

• Every injured body part, including consequential ones
• A cumulative trauma claim alongside the specific injury
• The job displacement voucher, if you did not return to work
• SIBTF, if you had a prior disability — and note SB 171 rewrote SIBTF effective July 2026 details
• A third-party claim against anyone other than your employer
• § 4553 serious and willful, if the employer knew about the danger — 12-month deadline
• Penalties for late payments — the automatic 10% under § 4650(d) details

Check 5 — What does the future medical actually cost?

Only relevant to a Compromise and Release, and it is the whole question.

Add it up over your remaining lifetime: surgery you may need, injections, medication, physical therapy, a device or prosthesis that requires replacement, imaging, office visits.

In any case involving a prosthesis, an implanted device, a joint replacement that will need revision, ongoing medication, or a progressive condition, a C&R without a professionally prepared lifetime cost projection is how a worker ends up paying for their own care later.

Check 6 — Who else gets paid out of it?

Medical liens. Child support. Medicare's interest, if you are or will soon be eligible — which may require a Medicare Set-Aside. The number you take home is not the number on the offer.

One thing that is true

A judge has to approve any settlement and must find it adequate, including for unrepresented workers. But the judge decides on the record in front of them — which is usually the defense's record. A judge cannot value a body part nobody claimed.