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Knowledge, experience, and dedication have brought the lawyers of The Epstein Law Firm to the forefront of their profession. From personal injury to civil litigation, they have built a strong record of success in achieving justice for their clients.
Our practice is diverse and well-established. Recognizing that every case is unique, we always begin by listening to you.
The Epstein Law Firm, P.A. has been successfully representing clients throughout New Jersey since 1973
After a New Jersey car accident, the bills arrive in a different order than the compensation does. The ambulance, the emergency room, the repair estimate, and the missed paycheck are immediate. The money that is supposed to answer for them comes later, from more than one source, and only after each source is put in its proper place. Understanding that order — what is paid first, what can be claimed against the driver who caused the crash, and what may have to be paid back at the end — is the difference between a settlement that looks fair and one that actually covers the loss.
This page explains the money side of a New Jersey motor vehicle accident claim: the economic damages you can document with records, the non-economic damages that compensate for pain and loss of enjoyment, how personal injury protection (PIP) coordinates with a claim against the at-fault driver, and how the limitation-on-lawsuit option can gate the second category altogether. It also covers what happens when the other driver’s policy is too small or missing, what a spouse may claim, and why liens and deadlines matter from the start. For a broader overview, see our New Jersey car accident page.
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Economic damages are the financial losses the crash caused, proved with bills, pay records, and other documents rather than argument. The main categories are medical expenses, lost income, diminished earning capacity, out-of-pocket costs, and property damage.
Medical bills, past and future. The claim can include reasonable medical expenses already incurred — emergency care, hospital stays, surgery, follow-up visits, physical therapy, prescriptions, and medical equipment — and, where the medical proof supports it, the cost of care you are reasonably expected to need in the future. Future care is built from treating physicians’ opinions and, in serious cases, a life-care plan pricing the treatment and assistance an injury will require.
Lost wages and diminished earning capacity. Time missed from work is recoverable, documented with pay stubs, employer records, and, for self-employed people, tax returns and business records. A larger category is diminished earning capacity: if the injury leaves you unable to return to the same job, hours, or physical work, the claim can address income lost over your working life, usually with a vocational or economic expert. PIP’s income continuation benefits are modest and capped, and do not replace a full wage-loss claim.
Out-of-pocket costs and property damage. Keep receipts for copays and deductibles, travel to treatment, and help at home you had to hire. Property damage covers repair of your vehicle or, if totaled, its value. These amounts are easy to prove — and easy to lose if receipts are thrown away.
One caution applies throughout: an undocumented loss is one an insurer will treat as if it did not happen. Records connecting treatment to the crash, and wage records from before and after, turn hardships into a claim that can be priced.
Non-economic damages compensate for harms that do not come with an invoice: physical pain, emotional suffering, disability, scarring and disfigurement, and the loss of enjoyment of activities, family life, and independence that the injury took away. For many seriously injured people, this is the largest part of the claim, and it is also the part with the least predictable arithmetic.
Here is the candid point every injured person should hear early: there is no formula, multiplier, or chart that guarantees a number for pain and suffering. You may read that insurers multiply economic damages by some factor, but no New Jersey law requires that method, and no adjuster is bound by it. What actually drives the value is the evidence — how severe the injury is, how long it lasts, whether it is permanent, how it limits work and daily life, and how credibly the medical records and the people who know you describe that change.
Documentation matters here too. A short, honest journal of pain, missed activities, and tasks you now need help with, kept close in time, is far more persuasive than a later general statement that life got harder. Photographs of scarring and records of completed treatment also shape the valuation.
Fault also affects the total. Under New Jersey’s comparative negligence law, N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.1, your damages are reduced by your percentage of fault, and recovery is barred if your fault is greater than the defendants’ combined fault. In a chain-reaction crash, where several drivers may share blame, that allocation can decide the case — our guide to legal options after a multi-impact car accident explains how fault is sorted out when more than two vehicles are involved.
New Jersey is a no-fault state for medical bills, which surprises people who assume the driver who caused the crash pays each bill as it arrives. Under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4, a standard automobile policy provides personal injury protection benefits — payment of medical expenses without regard to fault — up to the limit the policyholder selected, which can be as high as $250,000 per person per accident, though many drivers select lower limits. PIP is generally the first payer for accident-related medical treatment, subject to the policy’s deductible, copayments, and any health-insurance-primary election the policyholder made.
Because PIP pays first, the same medical bills are generally not recovered a second time from the at-fault driver. New Jersey law treats amounts collectible or paid as PIP medical benefits as part of the no-fault system rather than as damages to be presented again in the bodily injury case, and disputes about recovering PIP payments are handled between insurers in the settings the statute provides — N.J.S.A. 39:6A-9.1 addresses an insurer’s recovery from a tortfeasor in defined circumstances, including by agreement or arbitration where the tortfeasor was insured. The practical point for an injured person is simpler: PIP gets treatment paid promptly, the claim against the at-fault driver addresses the losses PIP does not pay, and uncompensated economic loss — amounts beyond PIP, deductibles and copayments, full wage loss, and future costs — remains part of that claim.
Two traps follow. PIP has its own paperwork, deadlines, and treatment rules, and a late or poorly documented PIP claim can leave bills unpaid. And do not assume a bill paid by PIP or a health insurer has been counted in your injury claim — keep your own complete set of bills and explanations of benefits.
The choice you made when you bought your auto policy can decide whether non-economic damages are available at all. Under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-8, New Jersey drivers elect one of two options. With the no-limitation-on-lawsuit option, you retain the right to pursue pain and suffering for any injury. With the limitation-on-lawsuit option — often called the verbal threshold — the at-fault driver is generally exempt from liability for non-economic loss unless the injured person’s injury falls into one of the statute’s categories.
Those categories are: death; dismemberment; significant disfigurement or significant scarring; displaced fractures; loss of a fetus; or a permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, other than scarring or disfigurement. An injury is considered permanent when the body part or organ has not healed to function normally and will not heal to function normally with further medical treatment. The permanent-injury category is where most disputes happen, because it depends on objective medical proof and a physician’s certification rather than on symptoms alone.
The threshold does not block economic damages. As the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance explains in its standard policy guidance, choosing the limitation on lawsuit option does not affect your ability to pursue economic losses such as medical expenses and lost wages. What it gates is the pain-and-suffering side. Two people with similar injuries can therefore have very different claims. If you do not know which option you selected, find your declarations page — a lawyer will ask for it early.
A claim is only as collectible as the insurance behind it. If your damages exceed the at-fault driver’s liability limits, the next source is the uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage in your own policy. Underinsured motorist coverage can respond for the difference, up to your own UIM limits, when the other driver’s available limits are not enough. Uninsured motorist coverage responds when the at-fault driver had no insurance at all, and it can also be central in hit-and-run cases where the driver is never identified.
An uninsured driver changes the strategy, not just the arithmetic. There is no liability insurer to negotiate with in the usual way, proof and notice requirements under your own policy become critical, and prompt reporting — to the police and to your insurer — can matter to whether the UM claim survives. Our page on uninsured and underinsured motorist accidents in New Jersey explains those notice, consent, and proof rules in detail, including why settling with an underinsured driver without your UIM carrier’s consent can put the UIM claim at risk.
Coverage mapping should happen early, before any release is signed: the at-fault driver’s limits, your UM/UIM limits, resident relatives’ policies, and any employer policy that may apply. In multi-victim crashes, one per-accident limit divided among several people makes sequencing as important as valuation.
An injury changes a household, not just a patient. In general terms, the injured person’s spouse may have a derivative claim — traditionally called a per quod claim — for the loss of the injured spouse’s companionship, society, and services during the injury and recovery. It is the spouse’s own claim for what the injury took from the marriage, and it rises or falls with the underlying injury case: it is normally brought alongside it, and it is affected by the same fault and threshold issues.
Keep the documentation specific. If a spouse took over childcare, household work, driving to appointments, or care tasks, those changes — recorded plainly, close in time — are the substance of the claim.
Both claims are subject to the comparative negligence reduction described earlier. If the injured driver is assigned a percentage of fault that is not greater than the defendants’ combined fault, damages are reduced by that percentage; if the injured driver’s fault is greater, recovery is barred. Insurers know this, which is why early statements about speed, distraction, or “feeling fine” at the scene can echo through the valuation of the entire case.
Most claims settle, but a settlement is a trade: certainty and a shorter timeline in exchange for accepting less than a jury might award — and signing a release that ends the claim for good. Trial offers the possibility of a fuller award at the cost of more time, more expense, and real risk, including the risk of a defense verdict or a fault allocation that reduces or bars recovery. A case should be prepared as if it will be tried, because that preparation is what makes a settlement offer realistic. Our walkthrough of what to expect during a New Jersey motor vehicle accident lawsuit lays out the stages, from filing and discovery through mediation and trial, so you can weigh that trade with your eyes open.
Before money is disbursed, claims against the recovery itself must be addressed. Depending on who paid for treatment, a health plan may assert a reimbursement or subrogation claim, and Medicare may seek repayment of amounts it paid for accident-related care. The rules, the amounts, and any right to a reduction differ by payer and by plan, and no honest lawyer will quote you a fixed percentage in advance. What is consistent is the sequence: identify every payer early, obtain its claimed amount in writing, resolve or properly provide for the claim, and only then disburse. Ignoring a known reimbursement claim does not make it disappear, and it can follow the money after settlement.
Finally, the deadline. Under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, a New Jersey personal injury action generally must be commenced within two years after the cause of action accrues. That is the outer limit for filing suit, not a sensible timetable for acting: insurance notice deadlines are far shorter, evidence fades, and claims involving a public entity can carry much shorter notice requirements. If a crash happened on one of the corridors discussed in our guide to the most dangerous and deadly roads in New Jersey, the same deadline applies — the road does not change the clock.
Our firm’s published results include a $4.25 million result for a father who died after a tire fell from his car and it flipped and caught fire, where a mechanic operations company had failed to attach the tire properly. We mention it only to make a limited point: serious recoveries are built on documented losses and careful coverage and liability work, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any other case.
The Epstein Law Firm can review the evidence, insurance issues, and next steps that may matter in your car accidents claim.
If you are working through the money questions after a crash, these pages address the issues that most often arise alongside them:
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Below are answers to common questions about recovering compensation after a motor vehicle accident in New Jersey. This information is general and not legal advice — contact our office for guidance about your specific situation.
You can generally claim economic damages — past and future medical expenses, lost wages, diminished earning capacity, out-of-pocket costs, and property damage — and, where the law allows it, non-economic damages for pain, suffering, disability, scarring, and loss of enjoyment of life. Each category must be proved with records, medical opinions, or other credible evidence.
What you actually collect also depends on fault, on the insurance limits available, and on whether personal injury protection has already paid part of the medical bills. A claim is valued on its own documented losses, not on averages or on what another case recovered.
Sources: N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4, personal injury protection; N.J.S.A. 39:6A-8, limitation on noneconomic loss; Epstein Law Firm, car accidents
There is no formula, multiplier, or chart in New Jersey law that guarantees a pain-and-suffering number. Insurers and juries weigh the severity and duration of the injury, whether it is permanent, how it limits work and daily life, and how well the medical records and other evidence document that change.
Because the valuation is evidence-driven, treatment records, photographs of scarring, and a contemporaneous journal of symptoms and missed activities matter more than any arithmetic shortcut. Anyone who promises a specific multiplier before reviewing your records is guessing.
Sources: N.J.S.A. 39:6A-8, limitation on noneconomic loss; New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance, Standard Auto Insurance Policy
Personal injury protection pays medical bills first, regardless of fault, under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4, up to the limit you selected. Medical bills paid through PIP are generally handled inside that no-fault system rather than recovered a second time from the at-fault driver, so PIP shapes what remains to be claimed rather than simply adding to it.
Losses PIP does not pay — amounts beyond its limits, deductibles and copayments, full wage loss, future care, and non-economic damages where allowed — remain part of the claim against the at-fault driver. N.J.S.A. 39:6A-9.1 addresses, in defined settings, how a payer may recover PIP payments from a tortfeasor, including by agreement or arbitration where the tortfeasor was insured.
Sources: N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4, personal injury protection; N.J.S.A. 39:6A-9.1, recovery from tortfeasor
If you selected the limitation-on-lawsuit option described in N.J.S.A. 39:6A-8, you generally cannot recover pain-and-suffering damages unless your injury falls into a listed category: death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement or significant scarring, a displaced fracture, loss of a fetus, or a permanent injury proved within a reasonable degree of medical probability.
The option does not block economic damages such as medical expenses and lost wages. The Department of Banking and Insurance makes the same distinction in its standard policy guidance. Because the permanent-injury category turns on objective medical proof, early and consistent treatment records are especially important in these cases.
That is what underinsured motorist coverage is for. After the at-fault driver’s available liability limits are exhausted, an underinsured motorist claim under your own policy can address the difference, up to your own UIM limits, provided the claim was noticed and handled as your policy requires.
Do not sign a release of the at-fault driver before the UIM carrier’s consent requirements are addressed, because settling in the wrong order can put the UIM claim at risk. The Department of Banking and Insurance describes UM/UIM coverage as available up to the amounts selected for liability coverage in a standard policy.
Sources: New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance, Standard Auto Insurance Policy; Epstein Law Firm, uninsured and underinsured motorist accidents
An uninsured driver does not end the claim; it redirects it. Uninsured motorist coverage in your own policy can respond when the at-fault driver had no insurance, and it can also be central when a hit-and-run driver is never identified.
These claims turn heavily on procedure. Report the crash to the police and notify your own insurer promptly, preserve photographs and witness information, and expect your insurer to examine fault and injuries as an adversary would. The coverage exists, but the paperwork rules are enforced closely.
In general terms, yes. A spouse may have a derivative claim, traditionally called a per quod claim, for the loss of the injured spouse’s companionship, society, and services caused by the injury. It is normally brought together with the injured person’s case.
The spouse’s claim depends on the underlying case, so the same fault rules and deadlines apply, including the two-year limit in N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2 for the personal injury action. Keeping a plain record of the care, household work, and support the spouse took over helps document what was lost.
Sources: N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, two-year personal injury limit; New Jersey Courts, Civil Practice Division
Possibly. If a health plan or Medicare paid for accident-related treatment, that payer may assert a reimbursement claim against the recovery, and the claim generally must be identified and resolved, or properly provided for, before settlement funds are disbursed. The rules and amounts differ by payer and plan.
No fixed percentage applies to every case, and the amount claimed should be obtained in writing and checked against the treatment actually related to the crash. PIP recovery between insurers is addressed separately in settings described by N.J.S.A. 39:6A-9.1; a health plan or Medicare claim against your recovery is a different issue and should not be assumed away.
Sources: N.J.S.A. 39:6A-9.1, recovery from tortfeasor; New Jersey Courts, Civil Practice Division
There is no fixed timetable. A straightforward claim can resolve in months, while a case involving serious injuries, disputed fault, a threshold fight, or a lawsuit can take considerably longer. Payment also follows resolution of any payer reimbursement claims, which must be addressed before funds are disbursed.
What should not happen is waiting in silence. The two-year filing deadline in N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2 keeps running while negotiations continue, so a claim that is not settling needs a filing decision well before that date. Ask for a realistic sequence — treatment, demand, negotiation, possible suit — for your own case rather than relying on averages.
The Epstein Law Firm offers a free case evaluation, and personal injury cases are handled on a contingency fee — no fee unless we win. That means you do not pay an hourly rate to have your damages, PIP coordination, threshold status, and available coverage reviewed.
Before you sign, ask how the percentage is calculated, how case costs are handled, and whether the terms differ if the case goes to trial, and get the agreement in writing. A short review can also confirm your filing deadline under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2 and which insurance claims should be opened first.
Sources: N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, two-year personal injury limit; Epstein Law Firm, car accidents
Tell The Epstein Law Firm what happened and get clear guidance about your injury claim and legal options.
The Epstein Law Firm publishes the following results. These are third-party work-injury results, rather than workers’ compensation benefit awards.
$2,000,000 settlement · $1,400,000 verdict
Read the firm’s published results
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is different and must be evaluated on its own facts.
These excerpts describe experiences with the firm. They are not identified as cases in this practice area and do not predict another outcome.
“They took the time to explain everything clearly, making sure I understood my options and felt comfortable with each step of the process.”
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The Epstein Law Firm
The Epstein Law Firm