Premises liability case value calculator.

Why premises liability cases are harder to value than MVA

Written by the team that calibrated the model, for attorneys deciding whether to trust a premises number. If you just want your case's figure, run the six-question prediction above. The detail below is here when you want to check our work.

Premises liability looks adjacent to MVA in the case-management view — same plaintiff attorney, same intake call, same severity ladder, similar damages math. It is not the same modeling problem. PL cases carry more variance on three dimensions, and the confidence bands on PL predictions reflect each one:

• Comparative fault exposure is materially larger. Almost every premises case carries a defense narrative — the plaintiff knew about the condition, the warning sign was posted, the lighting was adequate. The defense rarely concedes liability the way a rear-impact MVA defense does. Contested liability is the norm for PL, not the exception — which is one reason the confidence band runs wider, not the gross number. Predict returns a gross value before any comparative-fault reduction; the wider band reflects that a more variable cohort makes the outcome less certain, while the value you anchor to stays gross. The fault allocation itself is yours to weigh, not something the model bakes into the number.
• Fact patterns vary widely. Slip-and-fall in a grocery store, slip on ice outside an office building, fall down stairs in a residential property, trip on a sidewalk crack — the underlying causation story shapes the damages calculation in ways that don't appear in MVA cases.
• Verdict density is lower. Premises liability is the thinner of the two folds; the MVA fold is the larger, denser one. Less data, modestly wider bands.

The consequence: confidence bands on premises predictions run ±12–18% at moderate severity, versus ±8–14% on MVA. Not dramatically wider, but visibly wider — and the difference is honest.

What moves a premises liability case value

Four inputs move the gross premises number. The liability narrative sits alongside them as context you weigh — Predict does not bake a comparative-fault discount into the value:

• Injury severity. The single largest driver, just as in MVA. The severity ladder is similar — minor through catastrophic — though how premises values compare to the MVA equivalent varies by jurisdiction: in our data premises cases settle below MVA in some states and above it in others.
• Jurisdiction. Per-state distinctions matter even more for premises than for MVA. New York Labor Law cases sit in a separate jurisdiction fold, and a state's comparative-fault rule shapes how PL cases resolve. The model tunes to the state — and to county-level demographics within it.
• Case category. The premises category shapes the number: slip-and-fall, inadequate security, building maintenance, animal attack, drowning risk, and fire-and-chemical cases settle differently. Government property also carries sovereign-immunity exposure, and industrial premises have OSHA-overlap considerations.
• Medical specials. Same anchor as MVA, with the same caveats around the "multiple of meds" heuristic.
• Liability narrative. Captured as context, not a discount. The defense will run a comparative-fault narrative on almost every PL case — was the condition open and obvious? how long was the hazard present? did the owner have actual or constructive notice? That argument is yours to weigh against the gross number; it doesn't change the value Predict returns.

Jurisdiction differences in PL resolve differently than in MVA

Case type and jurisdiction interact. Within the same state, premises medians and MVA medians can diverge sharply — the case economics differ by case type, not just by state. A jurisdiction assumption carried over from MVA would miss systematically on a premises case, which is why the model trains separate jurisdiction folds for each case type rather than applying one state adjustment across both.

The Predict model treats the case type and jurisdiction as independent inputs and trains separate jurisdiction folds for each. Per-state breakdowns are on the state-by-state calculator hub.

How this differs from a verdict-search lookup

A verdict database is a citation source: it hands you comparables and leaves the weighting to you. You read a stack of cases and decide, by feel, how much each one should move your number. Predict does the weighting first. Injury severity, direct damages, the premises case category, and the jurisdiction fold are scored against the premises fold of the training corpus, and the result ships with a 90% confidence band so you can see exactly how much certainty the model is willing to commit to. The comparables are still there under every number when you want to cite them, and the liability narrative stays yours to weigh against the gross figure. You just start from a calibrated figure instead of a stack of cases, and you start from the band, not a single point.

What the model does not do

The free version on this page does not cite the comparable-verdict cohort, does not resolve the full premises case category beyond the case-type field, does not address Labor Law exposure for New York cases, and does not draft a demand letter. Those features run inside the 14-day free trial — including a full demand letter exported in your firm's own style and formatting. $0 today — card on file, cancel anytime; nothing is charged until day 15.

After the trial, Predict is $499 per seat / month, unlimited predictions, billed monthly. Cancel anytime in one click. For context, the under-valuation on a single mis-anchored premises case usually exceeds a year of access.