Colossus: The Computer Program Routinely Used by Insurance Companies to Value Your Personal Injury Claim

Though many personal injury lawyers will assert to be able to value your claim, the truth of the matter is that most insurance agencies often use a computer system called Colossus to calculate what your personal injury is worth. Colossus was introduced in 1980 and has proven to be so effective that more than 50 percent of the nation’s insurance adjusters now use it to determine how much an accident victim stands to gain for their damages.

Colossus operates on a rules-based system that converts a series of inputs regarding the severity of injuries into a numeric score of pain and suffering. In essence, Colossus does what claims adjusters have been attempting to do since the dawn of the insurance era: reduce the human experience of suffering into a dollar amount. While Colossus is highly accurate, it can be very unfair to the victims of personal injury.

How Colossus Works

Before Colossus even factors in the details of your particular case, it will assess seemingly irrelevant considerations first, such as whether your lawyer has a record of taking cases to court or if they tend to settle for the first offer they receive, and in what jurisdiction your claim arises. Only after it has input that data into the system will it input information regarding your injury. Colossus contains 600 injury codes that represent the various types of personal injuries a person can sustain. It grants each injury a “severity” value, and assigns a monetary value for each “point” the plaintiff earns on the severity scale. While this may seem like a fair system, Colossus conveniently ignores the fact that there are over 12,000 injury codes used by healthcare providers to classify injuries.

While the idea behind Colossus is to ensure a fair, unbiased assessment of a person’s injuries and damages, they do not take into consideration the more important factors of a personal injury case, such as stress, pain, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of companionship, an inability to do the things you love, and a number of other factors that a judge and jury would consider.

A Tampa Personal Injury Lawyer Will Put the Human Element Back in Your Claim

At The Pendas Law Firm, our Tampa personal injury lawyers understand that there is much more to your damages than a computer system can calculate. If your insurance agency offered a much lower settlement than what is necessary to cover your losses and damages, it may be because they are working Colossus. If this is the case, our lawyers can advocate on your behalf and ensure that a human also has a say in your final settlement. To speak with one of our Tampa personal injury lawyers today, call 1-844-200-0000.

The Pendas Law Firm also serves clients in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Fort Myers, West Palm Beach, Daytona, Bradenton, and Jacksonville areas.