Compensation in a California injury claim is not a single number arrived at by judgment. It is a set of recognised categories, each proved separately, each failing separately. Understanding which ones apply to a situation explains far more about how a claim will go than any figure drawn from someone else’s case.
This page sets out the categories California recognises, what each one covers, and which of them are most often left undocumented until it is too late to document them.
Key Takeaways
- California divides losses into economic and non-economic. The distinction is not cosmetic — the two are proved by different evidence and treated differently when more than one party is responsible.
- The forward-looking categories, future medical care and reduced earning capacity, are the ones most often under-documented, because they require evidence about things that have not happened yet.
- Loss of consortium belongs to a spouse and is their claim, not an addition to the injured person’s.
- Where a collision is fatal, a wrongful death claim and a survival action are two separate claims with different claimants and different recoverable losses.
- There is no preset value for a claim, and no formula converts the categories into an amount.
Two Kinds of Loss
Every category sits on one side of a line. Economic losses are things with a cost that can be evidenced — what was spent, what was not earned, what will have to be spent. Non-economic losses are the effects of the injury on the person’s life, which have no invoice attached and are established in an entirely different way.
The split matters beyond vocabulary. The two are proved by different material, they are argued about differently, and where more than one party is responsible California treats them differently in how each defendant’s share works. Our page on California personal injury claims sets out the categories and states the position on valuation directly: there is no preset value for any injury claim, and no attorney can responsibly quote one.
The Economic Categories
Past medical expenses
The treatment already received. This is the most straightforward category and the one people assume is the whole claim. It is usually the smallest of the economic categories in a serious case.
Future medical care
Treatment, rehabilitation and ongoing care still to come. This is not established by producing bills, because the bills do not exist. It is established by evidence about what the injury will require, which means it depends on treating providers having documented the expected course rather than only the care delivered so far.
This category is routinely lost rather than argued away. A claim resolved before anyone has established what the long-term picture looks like has not valued this category at zero by agreement; it has simply not valued it.
Lost income
Earnings not received because of the injury. Straightforward for salaried work with records, considerably less so for people who are self-employed, paid irregularly, work variable hours, or hold more than one job. Where income is irregular, the evidence has to establish the pattern before it can establish the interruption.
Reduced future earning capacity
This is a separate category from lost income and the two are frequently conflated. Lost income concerns earnings already missed. Earning capacity concerns what a person is now able to do over the rest of a working life — whether they can return to the same work, at the same level, for the same hours, with the same prospects.
Capacity can be reduced even where someone has returned to work and is being paid the same, because the question is what they are now capable of rather than what they currently receive. It is the category that most often goes unclaimed, because on the surface nothing appears to have been lost.
Property and related out-of-pocket costs
For a person on foot this rarely amounts to much — personal items rather than a vehicle — but out-of-pocket costs accumulate: travel to appointments, equipment, help at home, adaptations. These are recoverable and they are the costs people least often keep records of.
The Non-Economic Categories
Pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life. These cover what the injury did to the person rather than to their finances: the experience of it, and the things that are no longer part of their life or no longer the same.
There is no document that establishes this category, which is why it is argued about more than any other. What establishes it is specific, dated and concrete: particular activities given up, particular things that are now done differently or not at all, described by the people who see it rather than asserted in general terms. An account that stays general reads as general. An account that identifies what changed, when, and in what way does not.
No formula converts medical expenses into this category. The practice of multiplying a medical total by some figure is an adjusting shortcut rather than a legal method; nothing in California law directs that non-economic loss be derived from economic loss at all.
The Categories That Belong to Someone Else
Loss of consortium
Where a spouse’s relationship with the injured person has been affected, that is the spouse’s own claim rather than an additional item on the injured person’s. It is separate, brought by a different person, and frequently overlooked entirely.
Where a collision is fatal
Two different claims can arise, and they are not alternatives. Our page on California wrongful death claims sets out both.
A wrongful death claim belongs to surviving family members and concerns the losses the family sustains because of the death — the financial support the person would have provided, the value of household services, funeral expenses, and the loss of their love, companionship, comfort, care and moral support. The page identifies who may bring it: a surviving spouse, domestic partner, children and the issue of deceased children, with others entitled in defined circumstances.
A survival action belongs to the estate and concerns the claims the person held before they died. The claimants differ, the losses differ, and the two are often brought together from the same incident.
What Is Not a Category
No part of California law assigns a value to an injury by its name or its severity band. Published tables that present compensation ranges by category of injury describe results someone elected to make public. They are not drawn from any register of outcomes, they exclude whatever did not make an impressive entry, and they correspond to no method a California court uses.
One qualification is worth stating because it is a genuine distinction rather than a quibble. Different rules apply to particular claim types: as our personal injury page notes, claims arising from a health care provider’s professional negligence are subject to statutory limits on certain categories of damages. An ordinary pedestrian claim against a driver is a different kind of claim, and material written about one does not describe the other.
The official civil jury instructions used in California courts — the Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions, whose 3900 series covers damages — are published by the Judicial Council and set out how a jury is directed to approach these categories. They contain no table of amounts, because there is none to contain.
Why the Forward-Looking Categories Decide the Most
Past medical expenses and lost income are totals. They are assembled from documents that already exist and there is limited scope for them to be missed.
Future medical care, reduced earning capacity, the non-economic categories, and a spouse’s separate claim are different in kind. None of them is established by adding up what has already happened, and all of them require someone to have been building the evidence while the claim was open. A claim that resolves quickly resolves on the categories that were easy to document.
This is the practical reason timing matters more than it appears to. Our page on California pedestrian accident claims sets out the deadlines that govern how long there is to do it.
Talk to a California Pedestrian Accident Lawyer
The categories that decide the most are the ones that have to be documented while a claim is still open. Vaksman Khalfin, PC handles pedestrian claims throughout California from our San Mateo office, and the firm’s personal injury practice is led by Alan D. Khalfin.
You can schedule a free consultation to discuss what applies to your situation. Further reading is available in our California personal injury guides.
Reviewed by Alan D. Khalfin, Partner and Managing Attorney, Vaksman Khalfin, PC (admitted in California). Last reviewed: 10/13/2026
Frequently Asked Questions
The recognised categories are past and future medical expenses including rehabilitation and ongoing treatment, lost income and reduced future earning capacity, property damage and related costs, pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of consortium in a claim brought by a spouse. Which of them apply, and how well each is evidenced, is what differs between claims.
Not by a formula. Nothing in California law directs that non-economic loss be derived from medical expenses, and the practice of multiplying one by the other is an adjusting convention rather than a legal method. The category is established by specific, dated evidence about what the injury changed in the person's life, recorded by people who observe it rather than described in general terms.
Lost income is earnings already missed. Reduced earning capacity is the effect on what a person is able to do over the rest of a working life. Capacity can be reduced even where someone has returned to the same job at the same pay, which is why it is the category most often left unclaimed.
Where the relationship has been affected, loss of consortium is the spouse's own claim rather than an addition to the injured person's. It is separate and is frequently overlooked.
Statutory limits on certain categories apply to claims arising from a health care provider's professional negligence, which is a different kind of claim. Material written about those limits does not describe an ordinary claim against a driver. Whether any limit affects a particular situation is worth confirming rather than assumed.
Two separate claims can arise. A wrongful death claim belongs to surviving family members and covers the support the person would have provided, household services, funeral expenses, and the loss of their love, companionship, comfort, care and moral support. A survival action belongs to the estate and covers claims the person held before dying.
Because that category is finished, documented and small. The categories that are not yet complete — future care, earning capacity, and the effects on daily life — require evidence that takes time to build, and a claim resolved before that evidence exists resolves without them.
Consultations at Vaksman Khalfin, PC are free. Injury claims are handled on a contingency-fee basis: there is no upfront cost, and attorney's fees are owed only if we recover compensation for you. The written agreement sets out how case costs are handled.
